I stood still for five minutes. The one-eyed collie drifted into the stable and did a thorough job of smelling my shoes. But he still wouldn't let me touch him. When I reached down, he moved back.
Mr. Harley got up and emptied his pail into a ten-gallon can; the foaming milk almost overflowed. He was a tall old man wearing overalls and a straw hat which almost brushed the low rafters. His eyes were as flat and angry and his mouth as sternly righteous as in Harold's portrait of him. The dog retreated whining as he came near.
`You're not from around here. Are you on the road?'
`No.'
I told him who I was. `And I'll get to the point right away. Your son Mike's in very serious trouble.'
`Mike is not my son,' he intoned solemnly, `and I have no wish to hear about him or his trouble.'
`But he may be coming here. He said he was. If he does, you'll have to inform the police.'
`You don't have to instruct me in what I ought to do. I get my instructions from a higher power. He gives me my instructions direct in my heart.'
He thumped his chest with a gnarled fist.
`That must be convenient.'
`Don't blaspheme or make mock, or you'll regret it. I can call down the punishment.'
He reached for a pitchfork leaning against the wall. The dog ran out of the stable with his tail down. I became aware suddenly that my shirt was sticking to my back and I was intensely uncomfortable. The three tines of the pitchfork were sharp and gleaming, and they were pointed at my stomach.
`Get out of here,' the old man said. `I've been fighting the Devil all my life, and I know one of his cohorts when I see one.'
So do I, I said, but not out loud. I backed as far as the door, stumbled on the high threshold, and went out. Mrs. Harley was standing near my car, just inside the wire gate. Her hands were quiet on her meager breast.
`I'm sorry,' she said to me. `I'm sorry for Carol Brown. She wasn't a bad little girl, but I hardened my heart against her.'
`It doesn't matter now. She's dead.'
`It matters in the sight of heaven.'
She raised her eyes to the arching sky as if she imagined a literal heaven like a second story above it. Just now it was easier for me to imagine a literal hell, just over the horizon, where the sunset fires were burning.
`I've done so many wrong things,' she said, `and closed my eyes to so many others. But don't you see, I had to make a choice.'
`I don't understand you.'
`A choice between Mr. Harley and my sons. I knew that he was a hard man. A cruel man, maybe not quite right in the head. But what could I do? I had to stick with my husband. And I wasn't strong enough to stand up to him. Nobody is. I had to stand by while he drove our sons out of our home. Harold was the soft one, he forgave us in the end. But Mike never did. He's like his father. I never even got to see my grandson.'
Tears ran in the gullies of her face. Her husband came out of the barn carrying the ten-gallon can in his left hand and the pitchfork in his right.
`Go in the house, Martha. This man is a cohort of the Devil. I won't allow you to talk to him.'
`Don't hurt him. Please.'
`Go in the house,' he repeated.
She went, with her gray head down and her feet dragging.
`As for you, cohort,' he said, `you get off my farm or I'll call down the punishment on you.'
He shook his pitchfork at the reddening sky. I was already in the car and turning up the windows.
I turned them down again as soon as I got a few hundred yards up the lane. My shirt was wet through now, and I could feel sweat running down my legs. Looking back, I caught a glimpse of the river, flowing sleek and solid in the failing light, and it refreshed me.
17
BEFORE DRIVING OUT to the Harley farm, I had made an evening appointment with Robert Brown and his wife. They already knew what had happened to their daughter. I didn't have to tell them.
I found their house in the north end of the city, on a pleasant, tree-lined street parallel to Arthur Street. Night had fallen almost completely, and the street-lights were shining under the clotted masses of the trees. It was still very warm. The earth itself seemed to exude heat like a hot-blooded animal.
Robert Brown had been watching for me. He hailed me from his front porch and came out to the curb. A big man with short hair, vigorous in his movements, he still seemed to be wading in some invisible substance, age or sorrow. We shook hands solemnly.
He spoke with more apparent gentleness than force: `I was planning to fly out to California tomorrow. It might have saved you a trip if you had known.'
`I wanted to talk to the Harleys, anyway.'
`I see.'
He cocked his head on one side in a birdlike movement which seemed odd in such a big man. `Did you get any sense out of them?'
