and the feel of the wind, that it would be a good night. The realization was one that filled him with equal parts of anticipation and guilt.
The air temperature was just right, and the dew had left a perfect leavening of dampness in the night. Cot let the false door close quietly behind him, and slipped noiselessly up and across the moist lawn at an angle that brought him out on the clay road precisely at the point where his property ended and Mr. Holland’s began.
He walked through the darkness with gravel shifting silently under his moccasins, his bandolier bumping gently against his body, with the occasional feel of oily metal against his cheek as the carbine, slung from his shoulder, touched him with its curving magazine. It was a comforting sensation—his father had felt it before him, and his father’s father. It had been the mark of free men for all of them.
When he had come as close to Mr. Holland’s house as he could without disturbing the dog, he left the road and slid into the ditch that ran beside it, cradling his carbine in the crooks of his bent arms, and bellycrawled silently and rapidly until he was as near the house as the ditch would take him.
He raised his head behind a clump of weeds he had planted during a spring rainstorm, and, using this as cover, swept the front of the house with his vision. For any of this to be possible without the dog’s winding him, the breeze had to be just right. On such nights, it was.
The parlor window—perhaps the only surface-level parlor window in this area, he commented to himself— was lighted, and she was in the room. Cot checked the sharp sound of his breath and sank his teeth against his lower lip. He kept his hands carefully away from the metalwork of his carbine, for his palms were sweated.
He waited until, finally, she put the light out and went downstairs to bed, then dropped his head and rested it on his folded arms for a moment, his eyes closed and his breath uncontrollably uneven, before he twisted quietly and began to crawl back up the ditch. Tonight, so soon after what his mother had told him, he was shocked but not truly surprised to discover that his vision was badly blurred.
He reached the point where it was safe to leave the ditch and stood up quietly. He put one foot on the road and sprang up to the clay surface of the road with an easy contraction of his muscles. He had no warning of a darker shadow among the dappled splotches thrown by the roadside weeds and bushes. Mr. Holland said “Hi, boy,” quietly.
Cot dropped his shoulder, ready to let the carbine he had just reslung slide down his arm and into his hand. He stood motionless, peering at Mr. Holland, who had stepped up to him.
“Mr. Holland!”
The old man chuckled. “Weren’t expecting me, huh?”
Cot took a measure of relief from the man’s obvious lack of righteous anger. “Good—uh—good evening, sir,” he mumbled. Apparently, he was not going to die immediately, but there was no telling what was going on in his neighbor’s mind.
“Guess I was right about that patch of weeds springing up kind of sudden.”
Cot felt the heat rush into his ears, but he said “Weeds, sir?”
“Pretty slick. You got the makings of a damn good combat man.”
Cot was thankful for the darkness as one cause for his flush was replaced by another. The lack of light, however, did not keep his voice from betraying more than it should have. Mr. Holland’s implication had been obvious. “My family, sir, prefers not to acknowledge those kin who had sunk below their proper station. You will understand that, under differing circumstances, I might thus consider your remark to be, in the least, not flattering.”
Mr. Holland chuckled—a sound filled with the accumulated checks to hastiness acquired through a lifetime that was half over when Cot’s began.
“No insults intended, son. There was a time when a guy like you wouldn’t have stopped strutting for a week, after a pat on the back like that.”
Cot could still feel the heat in his cheeks, and its cause overrode his sharp sense of incongruity at this midnight debate, a completely illogical development of circumstances under which any other two men would long ago have settled the question in a normal civilized manner.
“Fortunately, sir,” he said, his voice now kept at its normal pitch with some effort, “we no longer live in such times.”
“You don’t maybe.” Mr. Holand’s voice was somewhat testy.
“I sincerely hope not, sir.”
Mr. Holland made an impatient sound. “Boy, your Uncle Jim was the best goddamned rifleman that ever took out a patrol. Any family that gets snotty notions about being better than him—” He chopped the end of the sentence off with a raw and bitter curse.
Cot recoiled from the adjective. “Sir!”
“Excuse me,” Mr. Holland said sarcastically. “I forgot you’re living in refined times. Not too refined for a man to go crawling in ditches to sneak a look at a girl, though. A girl sitting and reading a book!” he added with something like shock.
Cot felt the adrenaline-propelled tingle sweep through his bloodstream and knot his muscles. At any moment, Mr. Holland was obviously going to call an Affair of Integrity. Even while he formulated the various points for and against a right to defend himself even if surprised in so palpably immoral an action, his reflexes let the carbine slip to the angle of his shoulder and hang precariously from the sling, which now, despite careful oiling, gave a perverse squeak. Cot set his teeth in annoyance.
“I haven’t got a gun on you, boy,” Mr. Holland said quietly. “There’s better ways of protecting your integrity than shooting people.”
Cot had long ago decided that his neighbor, like all the old people who had been born in the Wild Sixties and grown up through the Dirty Years was, to put it politely, unconventional. But the sheer lack of common sense in going unarmed into a situation where one’s Integrity might be molested was more than any unconventionality.
But that was neither here nor there. In such a case, the greater responsibility in carrying out the proprieties was obviously his to assume.
“Allow me to state the situation clearly, sir,” he said, “In order that there might be no misunderstanding.”
“No misunderstanding, son. Not about the situation, anyway. Hell, when I was your—”
“Nevertheless,” Cot interposed, determined not to let Mr. Holland trap himself into a genuine social blunder, “The fact remains that I have trespassed on your property for a number of years—”
“For the purpose of peeping at Barbara,” Mr. Holland finished for him. “Do me a favor, son?” Mr. Holland’s voice was slightly touched by an amused annoyance.
“Certainly, sir.”
“Can the—” Mr. Holland caught himself. “I mean, show a little less concern for the social amenities; ease up on this business of doing the right thing, come hell or high water, and just listen. Here. Sit down, and let’s talk about a few things.”
Cot’s nerves had edged to the breaking point. He was neither hung nor pardoned. This final gaucherie was too much for him.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said, his voice, nerve-driven, harder and harsher than he intended, “but that’s out of the question. I suggest that you either do your duty as the head of your family or else acknowledge your unwillingness to do so.”
“Why?”
The question was not as surprising as it might have been, had it come at the beginning of this fantastic scene. But it served to crystallize one point. It was not meant as a defiant insult, Cot realized. It was a genuine and sincere inquiry. And the fact that Mr. Holland was incapable of appreciating the answer was proof that his mother’s advice had been correct. Holland was not a gentleman.
Quite obviously, there was only one course now open to him, if he did not abandon all hope of Barbara’s hand. Incredible as it might seem, it was to answer the question in all seriousness, in an attempt to force some understanding through the long-set and, bluntly, ossified, habits of Holland’s thinking.
“I should think it would be hardly necessary to remind you that an individual’s Integrity is his most prized moral possession. In this particular case, I have violated your daughter’s Integrity, and, through blood connection, that of your family, as well.” Cot shook his head in the darkness. Explain he might, but his voice was indication enough of his outrage.
