Full Dark, No Stars

“And leave you my father’s land, I suppose?” she asked, and tossed her head. How I had come to hate that pert head-toss, so like that of an il -trained pony, and the little sniff which always accompanied it. “That wil never happen, Wilf.”

I told her that I would buy the land from her, if she insisted. It would have to be over a period of time—eight years, perhaps ten—but I would pay her every cent.

“A little money coming in is worse than none,” she replied (with another sniff and head-toss). “This is something every woman knows. The Farrington Company wil pay al at once, and their idea of top

dol ar is apt to be far more generous than yours. And I wil never live in Lincoln. ’Tis not a city but only a vil age with more churches than houses.”

Do you see my situation? Do you not understand the “spot” she put me in? Can I not count on at least a little of your sympathy? No? Then hear this.

In early April of that year—eight years to this very day, for al I know—she came to me al bright and shining. She had spent most of the day at the “beauty salon” in McCook, and her hair hung around

her cheeks in fat curls that reminded me of the toilet-rol s one finds in hotels and inns. She said she’d had an idea. It was that we should sel the 100 acres and the farm to the Farrington combine. She believed they would buy it al just to get her father’s piece, which was near the railway line (and she was probably right).

“Then,” said this saucy vixen, “we can split the money, divorce, and start new lives apart from each other. We both know that’s what you want.” As if she didn’t.

“Ah,” I said (as if giving the idea serious consideration). “And with which of us does the boy go?”

“Me, of course,” she said, wide-eyed. “A boy of 14 needs to be with his mother.”

I began to “work on” Henry that very day, tel ing him his mother’s latest plan. We were sitting in the hay-mow. I wore my saddest face and spoke in my saddest voice, painting a picture of what his life would be like if his mother was al owed to carry through with this plan: how he would have neither farm nor father, how he would find himself in a much bigger school, al his friends (most since babyhood) left behind, how, once in that new school, he would have to fight for a place among strangers who would laugh at him and cal him a country bumpkin. On the other hand, I said, if we could hold onto al the acreage, I was convinced we could pay off our note at the bank by 1925 and live happily debt-free, breathing sweet air instead of watching pig-guts float down our previously clear stream from sun-up to sun-down. “Now what is it you want?” I asked after drawing this picture in as much detail as I could manage.

“To stay here with you, Poppa,” he said. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. “Why does she have to be such a… such a…”

“Go on,” I said. “The truth is never cussing, Son.”

“Such a bitch!”

“Because most women are,” I said. “It’s an ineradicable part of their natures. The question is what we’re going to do about it.”

But the Conniving Man inside had already thought of the old wel behind the cow barn, the one we only used for slop-water because it was so shal ow and murky—only 20 feet deep and little more than

a sluice. It was just a question of bringing him to it. And I had to, surely you see that; I could kil my wife but must save my lovely son. To what purpose the ownership of 180 acres—or a thousand—if you have no one to share them with and pass them on to?

I pretended to be considering Arlette’s mad plan to see good corn-land turned into a hog-butchery. I asked her to give me time to get used to the idea. She assented. And during the next 2 months I

worked on Henry, getting him used to a very different idea. ’Twasn’t as hard as it might have been; he had his mother’s looks (a woman’s looks are the honey, you know, that lure men on to the stinging hive) but not her God-awful stubbornness. It was only necessary to paint a picture of what his life would be like in Omaha or St. Louis. I raised the possibility that even those two overcrowded antheaps might not satisfy her; she might decide only Chicago would do. “Then,” I said, “you might find yourself going to high school with black niggers.”

He grew cold toward his mother; after a few efforts—al clumsy, al rebuffed—to regain his affections, she returned the chil . I (or rather the Conniving Man) rejoiced at this. In early June I told her that, after great consideration, I had decided I would never al ow her to sel those 100 acres without a fight; that I would send us al to beggary and ruin if that was what it took.

She was calm. She decided to take legal advice of her own (for the Law, as we know, wil befriend whomever pays it). This I foresaw. And smiled at it! Because she couldn’t pay for such advice. By