The Witching Hour Page 2

  “I like books.”

  “I mean books like this — scholarly books.”

  She nodded. “Even books about pol-ter-geists. Specially books like that.”

  Matt felt unreasonably irritated. “All right, where do you live?”

  She stopped bouncing and got very quiet. “I cain’t go home.”

  “Why not?” he demanded. “And don’t tell me ‘I run away,’” he imitated nasally.

  “Paw’d beat me again. He’d purty nigh skin me alive, I guess.”

  “You mean he hits you?”

  “He don’t use his fists — not often. He uses his belt mostly. Look!” She pulled up the hem of her dress and the leg of a pair of baggy drawers that appeared to be made from some kind of sacking.

  Matt looked quickly and glanced away. Across the back of one thigh was an ugly, dark bruise. But the leg seemed unusually well rounded for a girl of thirteen. Matt frowned. Had he read somewhere that girls in the hills mature early?

  He cleared his throat. “Why does he do that?”

  “He’s just mean.”

  “He must have some reason.”

  “Well,” she said thoughtfully, “he beats me when he’s drunk ‘cause he’s drunk, and he beats me when he’s sober ‘cause he ain’t drunk. That covers it mostly.”

  “But what does he say?” Matt asked desperately.

  She glanced at him shyly. “Oh, I cain’t repeat it.”

  “I mean what does he want you to do?”

  “Oh, that!” She brooded over it. “He thinks I ought to get married. He wants me to catch some strong young feller who’ll do the work when he moves in with us. A gal don’t bring in no money, he says, leastwise not a good one. That kind only eats and wants things.”

  “But you’re too young to get married.”

  She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “I’m sixteen,” she said. “Most girls my age got a couple of young ‘uns. One, anyways.”

  Matt looked at her sharply. Sixteen! It seemed impossible. The dress was shapeless enough to hide almost anything — but sixteen! Then he remembered the thigh.

  She frowned. “Get married, get married! You’d think I didn’t want to get married. ‘Tain’t my fault no feller wants me.”

  “I can’t understand that,” Matt said sarcastically.

  She smiled at him. “You’re nice.”

  She looked almost pretty when she smiled. For a hill girl.

  “What seems to be the trouble?” Matt asked hurriedly.

  “Partly Paw,” she said. “No one’d want to have him around. But mostly I guess I’m just unlucky.” She sighed. “One feller I went with purty near a year. He busted his leg. Another nigh drownded when he fell in the lake. Don’t seem right they should blame me, even if we did have words.”

  “Blame you?”

  She nodded vigorously. “Them as don’t hate me say it’s courtin’ disaster ‘stead of a gal. The others ain’t so nice. Fellers stopped comin’. One of ‘em said he’d rather marry up with a catamount. You married, Mister — Mister — ?”

  “Wright,” Matt said. “Matthew Wright. No, I’m not married.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “Wright,” she said slowly. “Abigail Wright. That’s purty.”

  “Abigail Wright?”

  She looked innocent. “Did I say that? Now, ain’t that funny? My name’s Jenkins.”

  Matt gulped. “You’re going home,” he said with unshakable conviction. “You can tell me how to get there or you can climb out of the car right now.”

  “But, Paw — ” she began.

  “Where the devil did you think I was taking you?”

  “Wherever you’re going.”

  “For God’s sake, you can’t go with me. It wouldn’t be decent.”

  “Why not?” she asked innocently.

  Grimly Matt began to apply the brakes.

  “All right,” she sighed. She wore an expression the early Christians must have worn before they were marched into the arena. “Turn right at the next crossroad.”

  Chickens scattered in front of the wheels, fluttering and squawking; pigs squealed in a pen beside the house. Matt stopped in front of the shanty, appalled. If the two rooms and sagging porch had ever known paint, they had enjoyed only a nodding acquaintance and that a generation before.

  A large figure brooded on the porch, rocking slowly in a rickety chair. He was dark, with a full black beard and a tall head of hair.

  “That’s Paw,” Abigail whispered.

  Matt waited uneasily, but the broad figure of her father kept on rocking as if strangers brought back his daughter every day. Maybe they do, Matt thought.

  “Well,” he said nervously, “here you are.”

  “I cain’t get out,” Abigail said. “Not till I find out if Paw’s goin’ to whale me. Go talk to him. See if he’s mad at me.”

  “Not me,” Matt said with certainty, glancing again at the big, black figure rocking slowly, ominously silent. “I’ve done my duty in bringing you home. Good-by. I won’t say it’s been a pleasure knowing you.”

  “You’re nice and mighty handsome. I’d hate to tell Paw you’d taken advantage of me. He’s a terror when he’s riled.”

  For a horrified moment Matt stared at Abigail. Then, as she opened her mouth, he opened the door and stepped out. Slowly he walked to the porch and put one foot on its uneven edge.

  “Uh,” he said. “I met your daughter on the road.”

  Jenkins kept on rocking.

  “She’d run away,” Matt went on.

  Jenkins was silent. Matt studied the portion of Jenkins’s face that wasn’t covered with hair. There wasn’t much of it, but what there was Matt didn’t like.

  “I brought her back,” Matt said desperately.

  Jenkins rocked and said nothing. Matt spun around and walked quickly back to the car. He went around to the window where Abigail sat. He reached through the window, opened the glove compartment and drew out a pint bottle. “Remind me,” he said, “never to see you again.”

  He marched back to the porch. “How about a drink?”

  One large hand reached out, smothered the pint and brought it close to faded blue overalls. The cap was twisted off by the other hand. The bottle was tilted toward the unpainted porch ceiling as soon as the neck disappeared into the matted whiskers. The bottle gurgled. When it was lowered, it was only half-full.

  “Weak,” the beard said. But the hand that held the bottle held it tight.

  “I brought your daughter back,” Matt said, starting again.

  “Why?”

  “She had no place to go. I mean — after all, this is her home.”

  “She run away,” the beard said. Matt found the experience unnerving.

  “I realize that teenage daughters can be annoying, and after meeting your daughter, I think I can understand how you feel. Still in all, she is your daughter.”

  “Got my doubts.”

  Matt took a deep breath and tried once more. “A happy family demands a lot of compromise, give and take on both sides. Your daughter may have given you good cause to lose your temper, but beating a child is never sound psychology. Now, if you — ”

  “Beat her?” Jenkins rose from his chair. It was an awesome sight, like Neptune rising out of the sea in all his majesty, gigantic, bearded and powerful. Even subtracting the six-inch advantage of the porch, Jenkins loomed several inches over Matt’s near six feet. “Never laid a hand to her. Dassn’t.”

  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 sagged pitifully from its socket.

  “She did this?�
�� Matt asked weakly.

  “This ain’t nothin’.” Jenkins’s 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 sayin’ Ab done it,” Jenkins said, shaking his head. His beard wobbled near Matt’s nose; Matt resisted an impulse to sneeze. “But when she gets onhappy, things happen. And she was powerful onhappy when that Duncan boy tol’ her he warn’t comin’ back. Them chairs come up from the floor and slam down. That table went dancin’ round the room till it come a cropper. Them 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 happen 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 mah hand in a nest of rattlers.”

  “You mean to say 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.”

  “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. Why, she’s past eighteen!”

  From a shelf a single unbroken dish crashed to the floor at Jenkins’s feet. He jumped and began to shake. “See!” he whispered plaintively.

  “It fell,” Matt said.

  “She’s ‘witched,” Jenkins said, rolling his eyes. He 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 herself all kinda queer notions. ‘Tain’t allus been bad. Ain’t had to go fer water fer years. Seems like 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 gits you, son. A man kin only stand so much!”

  To Matt’s dismay, Jenkins’s 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 git outa bed in the mornin’.

  “Look, son,” Jenkins said, “yore a city feller. Yore right nice-lookin’. You got an edycation. Ab likes you, I reckon. Why’n’t you take her with you?” Matt started backing 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 her. You don’t have to marry up with her lessen you feel like it.”

  Matt backed, white-faced and incredulous, shaking his head vigorously. “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, “any man that’s alone with a girl more’n twenty minutes, it’s thought proper in these parts they should get married up quick. Since yore a stranger, I ain’t a-holdin’ you to it. But when Ab left me, she stopped bein’ my daughter. Nobody ask 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 twenty-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. It ain’t worth it. You brung her back. You kin take her away.”

  Matt glanced out the doorway toward the car and shuddered. He added another twenty 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 mighty powerful reasons.”

  Matt ran to the car as if he had escaped from bedlam. He opened the door and slipped in. “Get out. 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 slowly to the porch. But when she reached the porch, she straightened. Jenkins, who was standing in the doorway, shrank from his five-foot-tall daughter as she approached.

  “Dirty, nasty old man,” she said.

  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 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 all instances 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. “What kept you?”

  Matt blinked. “Oh, no!” he said. 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.

  “That’s not fair. I mean — he couldn’t, I gave him — ”

  “Oh, that,” she said. She reached into a pocket of her gingham dress. “Here.”

  She handed him the two crumpled twenty-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.”

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

  “I’ve always been good at findings things,” she said. “Places, things that are lost. Like a cat, I guess.”

  “But — but — how did you get here?”

  “I rode,” she said. Instinctively Matt’s eyes switched to the broom in the corner. “Paw loaned me the mule. I let her go. She’ll git home all right.”

  “But you can’t stay here. It’s impossible!”

  “Now, Mr. Wright,” Abigail said. “My maw used to say a man should never make a decision on an empty stomach. You just set there and relax. Supper’s all ready. You must be nigh starved.”

  “There’s no decision to be made!” Matt said,
but he watched while she put things on the table — thick slices of fried ham with cream gravy, corn on the cob, fluffy biscuits, butter, homemade jelly, strong black coffee that was steaming and fragrant. Abigail’s cheeks were flushed from the stove, and her face was peaceful. She looked almost pretty.

  “I can’t eat a bite,” Matt said morosely.

  “Nonsense.” Abigail filled his plate.

  Glumly Matt sliced off a bite of ham and put it in his mouth. It was so tender it almost melted. Before long he was eating as fast as he could get the food to his mouth. The food was delicious; everything was cooked just the way he liked it. He never got it that way. He could never tell anyone how to fix it that way. But that was the way it was.

  He pushed himself back from the table, teetering against the wall on the back legs of his chair, lit a cigarette, and watched Abigail pour him a third cup of coffee. He was swept by a wave of contentment.

  “If I’d a had time, I’d a made a peach pie. I make real good peach pie,” Abigail said.

  Matt nodded lazily. There would be compensations in having someone around to —

  “No!” he said violently, thumping down on the two front legs of his chair. “It won’t work. You can’t stay here. What would people say?”

  “Who’d care? Paw don’t. Anyways, I could say we was married.”

  “No!” Matt said hoarsely. “Don’t do that! Please don’t do that!”

  “Please, Mr. Wright. Let me cook and do for you. I wouldn’t be no trouble, Mr. Wright, honest I wouldn’t.”

  “Look, Abbie!” He took her hand. It was soft and feminine, and she stood beside his chair obediently, her eyes cast down. “You’re a nice girl, and I like you. You can cook better than anyone I’ve ever known, and you’ll make some man a good wife. You don’t want to ruin your good name and your chances by staying here alone with me. You’ll have to go back to your father, now.”

  The life seemed to flow out of her. “All right,” she said, so low that Matt almost couldn’t hear her.

  Dazed at his sudden success, Matt got up and walked toward the door. She followed behind him. Matt could almost feel the tears welling in her eyes. At the door, Matt stepped aside to let Abbie leave first. She walked out into the warm night. Matt opened the car door for her and helped her in. He circled the front of the car and slid into the driver’s seat. Abbie huddled against the far door, small and forlorn, not looking at him.