The Orphan Read online

  “What is that, boy?” Martin said, staring at the snake Robert was dragging. Carrying a full pail of milk in each hand, he set them down so quickly that the foamy milk slopped out onto the ground.

  “I found it by the chicken house,” Robert said, holding it up as it continued to coil and uncoil. “I think it’s dead, but it’s still winding up.”

  “That’s a rattlesnake,” Martin said, picking the mottled snake from Robert’s hand. “Don’t see them very often around here. Hey!” He looked at the head which hung by a few shreds of muscle where I had neatly bitten through the spine. “Looks like a dog did a job on this fella.” He held the snake up admiringly. “Must have been Biff. Look at the size of those tooth marks.”

  Listening, I feel disgust. As if that stupid old Shepherd could have even caught the snake, much less have done such a neat job on it. Robert was aware, of course, of the truth, and aware too that there were probably more snakes in the area. “I thought I saw another one in that pile of straw in the corner of the chicken house, but I’m not real sure.”

  The farmer knotted his brows together so that his eyes almost disappeared. He tossed the snake away into the weeds. “Well, we’d better see about that. Part of that old chicken house floor’s just dirt. Could have a bunch of them living in there for the eggs.” He smiled down at Robert. “These snakes are dangerous, you know. So I want you to keep out of the chicken house until we find out if there’s any more in there.”

  “I broke a bunch of eggs,” Robert said, holding up the pail.

  Martin took the pail from him and set it down. He picked Robert up and swung him high in the air, grinning the whole time. “We can throw the eggs to the hogs, but we want you without a bunch of tooth marks in you, son.”

  Later, Robert watched from the doorway of the chicken house, for Martin would not allow the little boy to come in while he lifted old planks out of the hard-packed dirt that formed the uneven floor. All the chickens had been herded outside into the run and the little wood panel dropped over their entryway. The old planks came up each one with a groan and a cloud of choking dust, ancient manure, feathers, and chickenfeed. When he lifted the one that had the snakes under it, Martin hollered out in a tight voice Robert had never heard him use.

  “Hey! Hey! Look out there, boy. This’n is it!” He flung the plank aside like a twig and grabbed the shovel he had brought and began stabbing at the writhing mass of snakes. They were mostly about a quarter grown, one very large one and a half dozen small ones, but in the nest they looked like hundreds, roiling and twisting in and out of each other. Then they seemed to explode in all directions, and Martin stabbed and leaped like a man with hornets in his pants.

  “Hi! Hi! Look out! Yi!” Martin was stepping high, sometimes on the snakes, sometimes trying apparently to stand up in the air without touching the ground at all, and never ceasing to stab down with the point of the shovel. Robert thought it funny and began to laugh and dance around. Martin’s leaping was so comical, the heavy brown farmer in his overalls dancing like St. Vitus and singing out in that high, excited voice made him sound like a young man again.

  When the snakes were all chopped to pieces and looked like an old pile of garden hose or bicycle innertubes all cut in sections, Martin came over to the door with his gray hair in his eyes and sweat and dirt all over the wrinkles in his face.

  “I guess that was kinda funny, hey, Robert?” He leaned the shovel against one side of the doorway and himself against the other side and just panted for a few minutes. “I don’t think I got bit any,” he said, breathing more slowly.

  “I didn’t mean it was funny,” Robert said. “I mean it was funny to watch you dance, but I know it wasn’t really funny.”

  “That’s all right, son. I haven’t danced like that since your Aunt Cat and me went to Renee’s wedding up in Grand Rapids and just about did ourselves out doing the polka.”

  But I am thinking how slow it seemed to watch the old farmer try to hit the snakes, who were surprised and befuddled by the light and completely panic stricken. It would be so easy to pick them up and kill each one while they are twisting around like that. It bemused me for a time to think about how slow humans are. But then they are clever and treacherous too.

  Little Robert had got used to being played with by the farmer and Aunt Cat, played with as human children are, thrown around on a bed, swung by the arms, ridden horsey on the foot. And it is my necessary habit to avoid any hint of shifting while these physically surprising things are going on. It is for this reason, the safety of the home environment, that Tommy was able to grab Robert when he came downstairs that last morning, and I did not respond immediately. When Robert had heard soft voices that were different from usual as he came down for breakfast, he had simply assumed they were part of a radio program.

  “C’mere, kid,” the narrow faced young man said, holding Robert very hard by his arms. “Now you sit in that chair and don’t you move or I’ll knock yer head off.”

  Robert sat in the chair at the dining room table taking in the scene slowly because it was so strange. Tommy seemed frightened. His feet were in constant movement as if he were a little boy and had to go to the toilet, and his narrow chicken face was white. Aunt Cat was sitting in a chair at the same table with her hands unnaturally still on the dark wood. Her long, homely face looked fearful, but her lips were held in a tight line, and her eyes followed the short, red haired man with more hatred than Robert had imagined was in her. Rusty seemed larger in the house than he had seemed under the railway bridge, but then I had seen him in different circumstances. While Robert sits in the chair, I wonder if Gus and the old sick man have come along, and where Martin is. I think of shifting suddenly, but it is not clear to me how serious the situation is, and Robert was reluctant to leave his new family, as certainly he would have to do if I were seen in so direct a way.

  Rusty walked up and down between dining room table and the back porch screen door where he would peer out across the garden, tossing the butcher knife from hand to hand easily as if it had been his for a long time. He walked back, easy on his feet, smiling a little. He had a red bandana around his neck and wore an old sleeveless undershirt under the black suit coat that he must have picked off some dump, for the pockets were ripped off and padding stuck out of the shoulders. On a stage, he would have made a comic tramp. But he walked like one in command of the situation, and the knife seemed to be his friend.

  “Goddammit, Tommy, stand still or go piss,” he said, sliding into a chair at the table so he was sitting between Aunt Cat and Robert.

  “What if they don’t get him?” Tommy said, shuffling his feet back and forth as if he had something on the bottom of his shoes. “What if he gets away and goes for the sheriff?”

  “They got his shotgun,” Rusty said. “And that farmer ain’t goin’ anywheres with his old lady sittin’ in the trap.” He put the knife down on the table in front of Aunt Cat and clasped his hands behind his head, teasing her to grab for it. She did not move or speak. Robert looked at the two men, trying to think what they wanted, wondering if things might still be all right. I began to be closer to events now, my attention aroused by the fear scent that filled the room. I begin noticing things now: the light from the windows getting darker instead of being bright with sun. It has sprinkled rain earlier this morning. Now it feels like a thundershower coming on. It has rained every day the past two weeks with great displays of lightning and thunder rolling in long reverberations across the farmlands like combers on a long, flat shore.

  “I see ’em. I see ’em,” Tommy said, peering out the kitchen window through the lace curtains. “Old Hackett’s bringing him right in. He told him a good story, I bet.”

  Rusty picked up the knife but did not otherwise move. “Shit yes. I knew they’d get him in here.” He began stinking the butcher knife into the table top in a pattern of deep cuts.

  “Do you have to ruin our table?” Aunt Cat said suddenly.

  “Oh, you can talk, huh
, old lady?” Rusty said, sticking the point in again. “Yeah, old lady, I got to do this. It keeps my nerves down.”

  “Now Gus has got the gun on him,” Tommy said in a strange whisper from the window. “They got him! Here they come, and he ain’t makin’ any trouble.”

  Robert sat very still. He obviously did not want to precipitate me into the middle of this situation. There was Martin in front of his own shotgun, and Aunt Cat with a butcher knife too close to her neck. For my own part, I am content to wait. When three more people have been added to the dining room and kitchen, the whole house begins to look smaller. Gus is much bigger than Martin, his huge shaggy head almost touching the top of the door frame. The old farmer seems to have shrunk in the presence of these ragged, filthy men. The coughing old one they call Hackett seems most concerned with money, while Gus and Tommy are frightened at what they are doing and would like to get quickly out. Only Rusty is cool, and so it is him I watch with most attention.

  “So you boys going to be criminals,” Martin said. “I’ve seen you around town, but I thought you were just good folks down on your luck.”

  “We ain’t criminals,” Tommy began.

  “Just get the money now, you rich bastard. That’s all we want,” Hackett said.

  “We ain’t aiming to hurt anybody,” Gus said, holding the shotgun in the crook of his arm like a duck hunter would. “We need the money and you folks can spare it.” He kept jerking his head for no reason, as if he had a fly on his neck.

  “You think we got money here,” Martin said, smiling at them. “We’re not rich people here. We have to work for everything, just like you do, I mean when you can get work. I know it’s not easy now, but …”

  “Will you shut yore mouth?” said Old Hackett, his voice rising to a scream and then vanishing in a coughing fit.

  “What he means,” Rusty said, stabbing the table again, “is you better have some money.” He suddenly held the knife level with Aunt Cat’s chin, pointed at one of the blue veins in her neck. She flinched and looked at Martin.

  “Now don’t get mean,” said Martin, holding up his hand. “You’ve got no reason to get mean. We’ll give you whatever you want, whatever we got to give. I don’t carry money with me. There’s the money I was going to buy some pigs with up on the dresser in our bedroom.”

  “Go see, Tommy,” Rusty said, taking the knife away from Aunt Cat’s neck and sticking it into the table again.

  While we all waited, it was like a different group of people, as if we were just strangers waiting for a stoplight to change or for a movie theater to open. The kitchen was getting darker.

  Tommy’s nervous feet came down the stairs again. “It’s here,” he shouted. “Look at that, look at that, forty, fifty, sixty dollars!” He did a little shuffling dance in front of Rusty. “Wowee, we gon have a time.”

  “That’s nice, old man,” said Rusty. “Now where’s the rest of it?”

  “You got any grocery money, Cat?” Martin said, his eyes looking very tired.

  “In the cupboard there behind that sick old man’s head,” Aunt Cat said without moving her hands from the table.

  Old Hackett gave her a vicious look and turned to pull open the cupboard door. In a blue pitcher that had a lid on it, he found fourteen dollars and some odd cents.

  “There’s a car comin’ up the lane,” Gus said in a high, changed voice. He shifted the shotgun to a ready position.

  “Let’s lam out,” Tommy said. “We got plenty.”

  “You know that car, old man?” Rusty pointed out the window and motioned for Martin to look.

  As Martin bent to look out the kitchen window, a bright flare lit up the room and the stunning crack-boom of close thunder made the whole group of people jump at the same time. Watching them with increasing awareness, I see each person leap in his own way, Martin hunching his shoulders, Gus jerking the shotgun up and blinking, Tommy flinching sideways as if he were about to be hit, Aunt Cat rising slightly from the chair, the old sick Hackett shuddering as if with a chill; only Rusty does not move, like a stone figure in an underwater world, he is the only one who does not respond with the current, and in his perfect immobility the others sense an unnatural control.

  Martin pushed the curtains back. “It’s our daughter Vaire, with her little girl most likely.” His voice was low and sad.

  Vaire came running from the car as the first large drops of rain began splashing into the dust of the garden and hitting like hail on the back porch roof. Anne was not with her. She was wearing a smooth green skirt and a white frilly blouse, looking happy and full of summer with her hair golden and bouncy in the mounting wind coming under the rain cloud. She dashed into the back porch, saw the big shaggy man with the shotgun and stopped, her face frozen in a smile.

  “Get on in here,” Gus said almost in a whisper, motioning with the gun. The thunder hit again, farther away, and the rain began to come down heavily.

  Vaire had stopped near the sink, touching her father’s arm, looking at him as if he would suddenly explain it all.

  “For an ugly couple of farmers,” Rusty said, holding the butcher knife between opposed fingertips, “you two got a real peach for a daughter. Come on over here, doll.” He indicated the chair between Aunt Cat and Robert. Vaire walked on into the dining area and around the table, touching Little Robert’s head as she passed.

  The whole time she sat at the table, she looked at her father, with whom she seemed in full sympathy. She did not once look at Rusty, and it was as if he and his comments did not exist. Robert felt her as a source of strength, for she seemed to banish evil by ignoring its existence.

  “There’s no more money here,” Martin said. “We got a small bank account, but they wouldn’t let you fellas cash a check.”

  “Let’s look around, farmer,” Old Hackett said. “Cause I just don’ believe you. Gimme that gun, he said, pawing at Gus. “I’ll get the money outta this damned liar.”

  “Get away,” Gus said in a low voice. “I’ll take care of the gun.” He pushed the old man back and swung the shotgun to cover the room again.

  “Tommy, you and the old man take the farmer around and see if you can help him recall where he’s got his savings hid at,” Rusty said. “Gus and me will stay here and talk with the ladies.”

  “I swear,” said Martin, his face pale in the dusky kitchen, “there isn’t any more money. It’s not …” Thunder crashed in a long rolling roar, drowning the rest of his words, and continued as Old Hackett said something fiercely, pantomiming silently in the crashing sound with his arms raised, a funny little Punch figure on a puppet stage, weak and ridiculous.

  Tommy and Hackett each took one of Martin’s arms and led him out the back door. “Let’s look down the cellar,” Tommy said. They all ducked out the door into the gray downpour of rain, becoming hazy figures at once, humped against the fall of water, moving past the screened porch out of sight.

  “Bunch of fools,” Aunt Cat said so suddenly that Gus jumped and swore. “We haven’t got any more money. That pig money was ust about the whole savings we had. We had to borrow this year to put the soybeans in the ground.”

  “Well, we’re going to find out,” said Rusty. “Happen I don’t believe you. I seen all that farm machinery, and that car ain’t but two years old.” But the whole time he was talking, his hands were touching Vaire, her hair, her bare arm, the side of her neck, her cheek. And his eyes looked at her with the bright blank stare a cat gets watching a hurt mouse that can’t run.

  Robert’s stomach felt like a fist squeezing. Above the pounding rain now they could hear splintering and crashing sounds from the cellar.

  Rusty was touching Vaire’s bare arm with the point of the knife now, making the flesh dimple. “You gotta be that farmer’s daughter in all the jokes,” he was whispering in her ear. “You’re pretty enough for a whole train load of salesmen, baby.”

  Vaire shook her head as if a fly had buzzed too close. Robert’s eyes were fixed on Rusty’s face,
following each movement of his head as he sniffed the young woman’s hair and whispered in one ear and then the other.

  “It’s all right, Little Robert,” Vaire said, reaching over to take his hand. “It’s going to be all over with soon. These bad men will be gone. It’ll be all right again.”

  “Quit messin’ around, you goddam fool,” said Gus. He was more tense than before, holding the shotgun at the ready, his finger inside the trigger guard.

  “Fuck off,” said Rusty. “This’s my party.” He allowed the hand not holding the knife to slide down Vaire’s shoulder until it rested on her left breast. He was saying something in her ear, and this time she could not ignore it as a flush rose in her neck and face. Robert could hear the spit working in Rusty’s mouth.

  The noises in the cellar had stopped, and the rain was pounding steadily like huge drums beating in different rhythms, making no rhythm at all but just a heavy sound that made you feel deaf and stupid.

  “You watch ’em for a minute or two, Gus,” Rusty said, his hand sliding over to take Vaire’s wrist. He twisted her arm behind her with a sudden move, bending her body forward over the table, and then pulled her up off the chair. She let out a tight little gasp, but otherwise did not indicate she knew such a person as Rusty existed.

  “The farmer’s daughter and me goin’ to explore upstairs and see if we can find something.”

  Vaire looked across at her mother whose hands were now gripping hard on the table edge. “Just be quiet now, Ma,” she said, her body bent over to one side as if she were crippled. “I’m going to be all right.” Her voice shouted unnaturally over the pounding of the rain.

  When she had to drop Little Robert’s hand, I knew he couldn’t hold on much longer. The blood seemed to be filling his body tight, burning in his face and hands. His mind was blanking out as Rusty shuffled past his chair, pushing Vaire ahead of him toward the stairs. The little boy’s hands leaped out to grab the man at hip level, pulled himself, chair and all, to the man’s leg and bit as hard as he could.