It’ll outlast anything skin an’ bone. You need to get in there with some machines an’ tear hell out of it!” He lurched violently across the room, clearing his throat, wiping at the long cornstarch hair worrying his eyes, working his mouth in a grimacing mixture of anger and exuberance, of fury practically, of drunken, dedicated fury; he turned and came thundering back. “Tear it out! Only thing! Chop out the big stuff and burn the brush, grub up the brambles and poison the vines. Goddam right. What if it is growin’ back on you soon’s you bat your eye? Screw it. You don’t get it this round, get it the next. Yee HEE I useta tell Ben. Whoo Whooee. Goddam tootin’. Tear the livin’ jesus outa it! You watch an’ see if I—” Hank kept him from falling. Joe caught the outflung cane. Viv hurried to his side, her face white. “Papa, Henry, are you all right?” “I think he’s just gassed, chicken,” Hank said without conviction. “Henry! Are you feeling all right?” Slowly the old face lifted and turned toward hers; gradually the sunken mouth stretched itself into a grin. “Okay, now—” He fixed her with one searing green eye. “What’s this about tryna sneak off on a coon hunt ’thout me?” “Oh, lord.” Hank sighed, releasing the old man and returning to his seat. “Papa,” Viv said with a mixture of relief and vexation, “you’ve just got to go to bed—” “Booger the bed! What about a coon hunt? I asked!” Joe Ben maneuvered him toward the stairs. “Nobody said anything about a coon hunt, Henry.” “Uh-huh, uh-huh, you think I can’t hear? You think the old nigger is too deef, too stove up to go on a little hunt? We’ll see about that.” “Come on, Papa.” Viv tugged gently at the sleeve of his shirt. “Let’s me and you go upstairs to bed.” “Why, all right,” he agreed with a sudden change of mood and gave Hank a wink so lascivious and led Viv so spryly up the steps that I told her I was giving her three minutes, at the most five, then I was organizing a posse to come up and rescue her from the old dragon. We listened to him thundering and hooting overhead. “I sometimes think,” Hank said, still shaking his head, “that my dear old daddy is slippin’ his gears.” “Oh no.” Joe Ben leaped to Henry’s defense. “That ain’t it. He’s gettin’ to be the town character, like I said. They’re callin’ him Old Wild and Woolly in Wakonda—kids pointin’ at him, women sayin’ hello to him on the street—and don’t think for a minute he ain’t lovin’ every minute of it. Ah, no, Hankus, it ain’t that he’s really comin’ apart—well, maybe a little, like his memory an’ his eyes—it’s more a kind of act, you see?” “I don’t know which is worse.” “Ah, Hank, he’s gettin’ a million kicks.” “Maybe. But dammit, the doctor put all that plaster on him to kind of anchor him. He said he wasn’t really so bad busted up but if we didn’t slow him down some he sure would be. Looks like, if anything, it revved him up.” “He’s just holding his mouth right is all, enjoyin’ his lot. Don’t you think so, Lee? Oh yeah, listen to him rant an’ rejoice up there.” I was pessimistic. “Sounds like he’s rehearsing for a rape.” “Oh no. It’s just an act,” Joe insisted. “All just an act. If he’s rehearsin’ for anything it’s for the Academy Award speech for the best actor of the year.” Above us we could hear the Academy Award candidate practicing diction as he called through spongy gums for Viv to get her puny ath back here an’ quit bein’ so blathted perthnickety! Viv appeared on the stairs, her hair disheveled and her pale cheeks flushed by the recent activity, and announced she was giving the rest of us one last chance to better old Henry’s offer of two dollars and a pint of liquor. Hank said that was too rich for his blood but Joe Ben allowed that in as his woman had already petered out on him and gone to bed with the kids upstairs, he’d up the bid to two-fifty. I kept my wallet in my pocket, but as she passed me on her way to deposit old Henry’s dirty socks in the laundry bag she asked if I didn’t have a five spot I wasn’t using. I told her to wait for next Saturday, payday. “You could get a draw tomorrow,” she hinted, blushing as she did with that anomalous combination of demure coquetry and brazen diffidence. “I could talk my husband into it.” “All right, tomorrow. Where shall we rendezvous? She whirled away, trailing light laughter. “In town at the jetty. Tomorrow is the day I dig rock oysters at the jetty. Bring a hammer.” “It sounds romantic,” I said and glanced about for brother Hank, to be sure it didn’t sound too romantic. But he was just coming away from the window. “You know, I been thinking,” he said thoughtfully, “what with the big yield we had today we’re standin’ in pretty fair shape. An’ we can’t expect this kinda weather to hold. An’ we’re all about half lit anyhow. So how about we take them dirteaters under the house there out for a little run, just to limber up?” “A hunt?” I asked. “Yeah!” Joe Ben was ready. “It’s late,” Viv said, thinking of us getting up at four-thirty for work in the morning. “Just right,” Hank said. “I was thinkin’ we’d by god just cross off tomorrow as far as work goes. We ain’t had a Saturday off in a long while.” “Good deal!” Joe Ben was beside himself. “Oh yeah! An’ you know what tomorrow happens to be? Halloween. Oh yeah, it’s too much: Halloween in town, a coon hunt, the old man bringin’ home a bottle, Les Gibbons fallin’ in the river...I can’t stand it!” “What about you, bub; you reckon you can stand it?” “I wasn’t exactly planning on a midnight stroll, but I think I’ll survive.” “I tell you what, Hankus: Let’s me an’ you take out first around the hill an’ get things goin’—them dogs’ll be worthless anyhow for the first hour after this long a layoff—and Lee and Viv can go on up on top to the shack and wait till we tree some-thin’, then follow on down. No sense in all of us stumblin’ around in the brambles. How’s that sound, Viv? Lee?” Viv was willing and I saw no way out of the trap I had fashioned for myself, so I said fine. Besides, I was looking forward to the chance of speaking with Viv alone. During the evening, along with my decision to bury the hatchet, I had resolved to use the impetus of well-being and whisky to tell all, to come clean. My grimy conscience begged for a thorough airing. I had to tell someone everything and had picked Viv as the most sympathetic ear. I would tell her the whole evil scheme, all my terrible plans. Of course, I might have to fill in here and there, pad out the abstract, chink in the unfinished details of the fiendish plot against my brother, but I was determined to reveal the truth to someone, though it meant lying myself blue in the face. That, however, is not quite the way it turned out. Upstairs, the young Henry with a compass in every pocket and a knife in his boot reached down to grapple with the shirtfront of the old Henry, pulling him roughly standing. “Okay, old man, you can let them downstairs think you’re fooled, but I’m blamed if I’ll let you think you fooled yourself. . . .” The old man looks down at the soft doeskin bedroom slipper that covers his good foot, noticing how worn it is already just since that doctor gave it to him. A be............