Free Heed the Thunder by Jim Thompson Page A

threw his pail of milk over his brother, and ran. Ted grabbed up his pail and hurled it. It caught Gus between the shoulders, knocking him flat and showering him with milk. Gus lay where he fell, howling with merriment, and his brother howled with him, slapping his knees.
    Robert was amused but frightened.
    “Now what you going to do?” he asked solemnly.
    “Well, by God, Bob,” said Gus, arising and brushing himself, “we got a problem there, all right. What do you say, Ted?”
    Ted sponged at his clothes with his bandanna. “Goddam if I know, Gus. Go in and take a hiding, I guess.”
    “Hell, I hate to do that.”
    “Well, we got to do something pretty quick. What you afraid of a hiding for, you sissy bastard?”
    “I ain’t afraid. I just don’t like to give the old lady the fun.”
    “Bob, you’re a smart man,” said Ted, oldishly. “What do you think we ought to do?”
    Robert beamed, and struggled with the problem. “Could you fill the pails with water?”
    “No—that’s a damned good idea, but I’m afraid it wouldn’t work. You see, we got to have something—”
    “I got it!” yelled Gus, breaking into another howl.
    “Yeah?” grinned Ted.
    “Sure! The hog lot!”
    Ted roared. “Y-you mean the slop barrel?”
    Gus nodded, tears of merriment streaming from his eyes.
    “Goddam! We will get skinned, then!”
    “What the hell? G-goddam, c-can’t you just see the old lady’s face when—”
    “Goddamit,” said Ted, “it’s a go.”
    Picking up their pails, the brothers went out the rear of the cowshed toward the hoglot, and Robert danced along at their side, giggling nervously. He had seen Josephine, the boys’ mother, in action, and knew something of the danger that lay ahead. At the same time, he had a great deal of faith in the ability of Ted and Gus to absorb punishment—and get out of it. It would be funny. It would be the worst yet. Suddenly his giggles turned into shrill laughter. And his cousins haw-hawed and dropped their arms around his shoulders.
    The slop barrel, with its accumulation of skim milk, dishwater, and garbage, was frozen over; and Gus climbed upon the fence and kicked in the ice with his heel. They filled their pails quickly, then shone the lantern into them. The stuff looked like milk and was, of course, a good part. Ted fished out some potato peelings from his pail, and Gus removed an egg shell from his.
    They started back to the house, warning one another against any display of amusement.
    The family had already sat down at the table when they arrived, and they left their pails in the milk room and washed hastily. They slid onto a bench at the end of the table, Robert between his two cousins.
    Josephine Fargo looked at them suspiciously over her heaped plate of eggs, pork chops, beefsteak, fresh hominy, mashed potatoes, and kraut. (She had been ailing, recently, and had not felt equal to fixing a regular supper.)
    “What was you devils up to down there?” she demanded.
    Robert snickered, and the loyal brothers joined him; and Josephine frowned at them, flabbily.
    She was a quaking, bread-pudding of a woman, with a tiny wad of hair and a nose like a button. Her words were pulled from her mouth by wheezing aspirates, and she seemed to lick their leavings as she licked the food which dribbled from her buck-toothed mouth. Her folks were sand-hillers, and did not amount to much. She had the ferociousness of a rat and the timidity of a mouse, and the two emotions struggled constantly for supremacy. Sherman had married her, so he said, during the year of the blackleg, when nothing but scrub stock survived. He had married her (he said) by way of relieving the overworked buzzards of the sand-hills. He had said such things in his savage inhibited jesting until they had almost attained the stature of facts; and to her, the smothering dropsy creeping over her rawboned frame, they were truth. She could regurgitate the cud of her hell, but a new one soon formed; it was