the shed, before he disappeared. “That’s quite a boy,” I said.
“Which room are you putting them in?” Hunt asked briskly.
We talked about that, and decided inevitably on Arslan’s old room. The window was a reasonably good escape hatch, and they could hear something of what went on in the living room and keep an eye on the street and the Morrisville road. I went upstairs to get things ready, and Hunt went out to the wellhouse to fetch milk and butter and eggs and a bucket of fresh water.
I got back to the kitchen just in time to see them come through the window—a beautiful performance. Hunt stood by the cabinet, with his hands full of dishes. Arslan came straight on into the middle of the room and stood there like the king of the mountain. “Good morning, General,” I said.
“Good morning, sir.” He turned to Hunt. “Bring me food upstairs. Sanjar will help you.” This was his greeting after two full years of absence. I was a little sorry I hadn’t decided to keep him in the shed. He passed me, heading straight for the stairs, with Sanjar hurrying in front. I followed, and Hunt trailed mutely after.
Pale daylight poured down the stairwell, and for the first time I got a good look at him. In the dark he was definitely Arslan, but I didn’t know whether I’d have recognized him in the light, except by the crippled hand. He was sunburned nearly black, and he wasn’t just thin, he was shrunken, like a fugitive from a prison camp. “You’ve been sick.”
He laughed huskily. “I
Sanjar was right; it was ten days, almost to the hour. They had come through the kitchen window in the dawn of a Monday morning; and a week and a half later, a little before the dawn of the Thursday, they went quietly through the back door. Arslan brushed against me in the darkness, and I felt the heat of his lean body, still fired from the fourth bout of fever since he came. It had been a nervous ten days, but quiet. There were no alarms. He slept; slept night and day, apparently. Sanjar stood guard over him like a tame tiger. He ate. Maybe ten times a day and three or four in the night, Sanjar would materialize in the kitchen to carry away a bowl or plate full of the nourishing messes that Hunt continually stirred up. And in those ten days I never once saw Arslan. It was like having a ghost for a tenant. All the news of his progress came through Hunt from Sanjar. Hunt had washed and ironed Arslan’s clothes, such as they were—the threadbare blouse and pantaloons of a peon. Sanjar had washed his own, in stages, borrowing a pair of Hunt’s pants while his dried in the basement, belting them in to fit and rolling up the legs so that he looked like a boy playing pirate.
And now Arslan, hot with his fading fever but steady on his legs, brushed past me in the dark, and Sanjar slid through the door like a breath of night wind. Hunt stood shoulder to shoulder with me, occupying the space Arslan had vanished through. “I’m going,” he said conversationally. “Maybe I’ll be back. Thanks.”
I stopped him with an arm across the door. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m going with Arslan.” He paused. “I didn’t ask him. I’m not asking you. I own the horse.” Then, Huntlike, “You can make a note of anything I owe you. If I live long enough, I’ll be back to work it off.”
“You don’t owe me anything, Hunt.” I dropped my arm. “Good luck. Come back.”
“Thanks.” He passed me into the night. I watched till the three horses moved out of the shed, shadows in darkness, and then I closed the door and turned back into the lightless house.
The truth was that I missed Hunt. For one thing, I cared about him. And for another, he had been
When Luella died, it was a terrific blow to me. And yet there was something in my feeling that surprised me. It was a while before I could even admit to myself what it was, and it was this, that I felt only a very little personal grief. As far as Luella herself was concerned, my overriding feeling was thankfulness that she had gotten out of it as easily as anybody could in these times. In the past years I’d watched her getting tireder and tireder, more and more discouraged and resigned, and I had grieved for that. Now the grief was relieved.
No, the real blow was entirely practical and selfish. Luella had kept everything running smoothly. No wonder she’d been tired. She had cooked and canned, washed and ironed, sewed and mended, swept and dusted and scrubbed, built fires and carried water; and hardest of all, she had coordinated all of those things, so that we never lacked for anything it was in her power to provide. And on top of everything else, she had helped with the garden and the chickens and the cow. She was even more a part of my life than I’d ever known.
The day after we buried her in the old Cedar Hill cemetery, I walked into the kitchen for the first time since she’d died. It was a real shock. The sink was piled full of dirty dishes. There were dirty pans on the stove and dirty napkins wadded up on the table. The whole place smelled of garbage and burned grease. “Hunt!” I yelled. He came in hastily from the dining room. “Look at this filthy mess! How did it happen?”
He shrugged. “There’s been nobody to clean up,” he said mildly.
I stared at him. “But good Lord,” I said at last. “It’s only been four days. Three days.”
He shrugged again. “This is what happens in three days.”
I couldn’t stand to look at it. I went back to the living room, and Hunt followed slowly, closing the door behind us. I sat down and scrubbed my hands over my face. “What about the women?” It seemed to me they’d been all over the place. When anybody died, now more than ever, the women friends and relatives would come over to do the cooking and cleaning and all of that.
He didn’t answer at first, and when I looked at him he had an odd expression on his face, partly sly, partly defiant. “Didn’t they bring food?” I asked him.
He nodded. “That’s what you’ve been eating.”
“Didn’t they offer to help out?”
“They offered.” He smiled a little puckered smile. “I accepted some of the food, because I couldn’t ask you to eat my cooking. But I didn’t accept anything else.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’ve known for ten years where I stand with Kraftsville, but this is the first chance I’ve had to show Kraftsville where it stands with me.” He came a little farther into the room to face me better. “I hate to bother you with this when you’re in the midst of your own trouble. But since it’s come up I’ll just say that I’m ready to leave whenever you give the word.” He waited a moment and went on. “But the only dealings I’m going to have with Kraftsville people from now on is to tell them to go to hell.”
“I’m Kraftsville people, too, Hunt.”
“Except you, of course. You’ve been very good to me.” But he said it oddly.
He had stayed, of course. He had turned out eventually to be a pretty good cook, and we had shared out the other household jobs between us. There was a certain toughness in Hunt, and along with his intelligence and his enormous coolness it made him a good manager, and sometimes a good worker. Nothing was too trivial, or too dirty, or too complicated for him to undertake. He didn’t have to ask questions, and he had the initiative to start things on his own. The trouble was, he couldn’t be relied on. He would drop a project in the middle, not from boredom exactly (it was never the really dull and monotonous jobs he gave up on), but because for some reason he suddenly lost the interest necessary for him to carry anything through. If he cared about a thing, he could be determined to the point of stubbornness.
There was no shortage of work to do. I’d kept my house and grounds up, and I meant to go on doing it. “Your place looks like old times, Mr. Bond,” Leland had said to me once. “Got yourself a real old-time well-house now.” What Leland actually understood better than most people, though he might not have known how to put it, was that the way my place looked was modern now. Where too many people were letting things wear out and run down and just sit there, I got rid of the obsolete items and installed whatever would be useful from here on out. After the water system broke down, I had dug a good well and a complete septic tank system. A lot of people told me that if I wanted that kind of facilities I should have bought a country house that already had them; but I was damned if I was going to move out of my own house for no better reason than that. We had plenty of room, with the Carpenter lot. I’d had the KCR’s help, of course, but Hunt had done all the calculations and his share of the manual labor—more than his share, because he worked faster than most. Hunt was no weakling. He might be
