King Blood(53)

'Uh, how's that?' Arlie said.

'I live with Papa,' she piped. 'Papa an' my little sister, Anne. Papa said it would only hurt us at first, and then it would feel good. An' I guess he ought to know, 'cause he's my Papa an' Papas know everything!' She tossed her head in childish bravado; then her voice clouded, and an incipient whimper came into her voice. 'But it still hurts. It hurts awful, awful bad. An' – an' – ' Dry-eyed, she began to sob. 'I want my Mama. _I want my Mama…!'_

A bilish lump had risen in Arlie's throat. He gulped it down sickishly. 'Jesus Christ!' he breathed. 'Jeez-ass Keerist!'

'I got to go now,' said Ethel Anderson. 'You better go, too, or your Papa'll be mad.'

She nodded to him winsomely. Nudging the horse's flanks with her heels, she galloped away. And in the dying sunset Arlie stared after her, the naked woman grown smaller and smaller in the distance. And at last disappearing, as all things must, at horizon's end.

Arlie turned, and trudged away in the direction of his own horse. His big hands clenched and unclenched slowly, and his mind was in turmoil. Emotionally, he was tugged this way and that; self-damned and self-praised; his inner self simultaneously shaken and reassured.

Could a thing be both wrong and right? Could justice be injustice? Condemnation wrestled with rationalization, and the latter at last won out.

He shrugged as he came up to his horse, his face and conscience clearing.

'Shit and four are ten,' he mumbled. 'Shot a goose and killed a hen.'

…It was quite late at night when Ethel Anderson reached the Gutzman farm, and Gutzman was already in bed. Hearing her ride in, he got up and lit the kerosene lamp; trying to maintain his anger with her as she drew oats from the feed shed, then, after a suitable interval led the horse to the watering trough. There was the sound of the barn door opening, the sound of its closing again. And then, finally, the rasping of weary footsteps, crossing the rutted soil of the barnyard and approaching the house.

Gutzman forced back the beam of approval which threatened to disperse his stern scowl.

So his Greta vas a goot woman. So always she took care of the animals first, herself second. Still, vas such an excuse to behave like whoore voman? To stay out half the night, and give him insults instead of explanations.

Standing in his long grayish-hued underwear, he drew himself erect as she entered the door; arms folded across his chest, his expression ominously severe.

'So, Greta!' he boomed. 'You vill now tell me vy – vy – '

The lamp wick was economically dampered, so that there was little light outside its immediate vicinity. His view of her, then, was dim and limited: a head and face, a partial torso, painted upon the darkness. But her nudeness was obvious – the fact that she had been out in public, doubtless before other men, without clothes. And that was more than enough to infuriate him.

'Badt girl!' he shouted. 'Fallen voman! Vy? Vot iss, answer me!'

Ethel bowed her head humbly. Her hands remained behind her, as they had in the beginning.

In her child's voice, she said, 'I lost my thing, Papa. You can't do it to me any more.'

'Vot! Vot?' gasped Gutzman, and at last he noted the dark smear of her groin. 'Vot has happened to you, Greta? Vy you talk like leetle girl?'

'I'm my Papa's good little girl,' Ethel said desperately, 'an' my Papa likes my thing better'n anyone's. An' now it's gone. An' – an' – ' She raised stubborn eyes to his. 'It's not my fault, an' you're not gonna whip me.'

_Tell me I'm not, yuh little bitch! Went an' sewed it up, did you? Well, time I tear them threads outta yuh_…!

'Mein Gott!' Gutzman stammered. 'Ach, my poor leetle Greta! Blease, you tell Gutzy vy – vot – '

'I'm going to kill you, Papa. I'm going to rip your thing off.'

She brought her hands around in front of her, jabbed with the item they were holding. It was a pitchfork, the needle-sharp tines gleaming dully through their encrustations of manure.

Gutzman stood frozen with surprise. Stunned, unable to move, he stammered incoherent inquiries as to the reason for this horror which confronted him. Ethel crept in closer, ignoring his questions; at last beginning to sing:

_Jesus wants me for a sunbeam,_

A sunbeam, a sunbeam!

Jesus wants me for a sunbeam,

I'll be a sunbeam for him!

She lunged forward suddenly. Gutzman let out a yell, flung himself aside. The tines of the fork sank in the wall behind him, and before he could recover sufficiently to wrest the tool from her, she had jerked it free. Was again jabbing and stabbing at him.

Slowly, he began to back away from her, keeping his eyes on her face. Blindly feeling with his hands for something with which to defend himself. He stumbled against a chair, almost went over backwards as she lunged at him again. He bumped into the stove, cold now after hours of disuse, and began circling it. Too late he remembered the large pile of firewood he had stacked behind it that night. A pile too large for him to move around, or to step over backward. And, of course, he would have to do it backward. Death awaited him the moment he turned away from her.