Free Heed the Thunder by Jim Thompson Page B

like the poisonous lead under a painter’s nails—painfully scraped away each night and reaccumulating the day following by the inevitabilities of existence. Every waddling step, every lift of her puffy arms, every aspirated word, brought the chameleonic truth back to her.
    Some nights—even some days—she dreamed that a gawky rosy-cheeked girl slipped out of the mountain of fat. And with a morose, roughly affectionate young man, she ran laughing across the virgin prairie or lay supple and submissive among the willows of the bayou. She made coffee over a cowchip fire, and sipped from the cup from which the young man drank, and their lips brushed the same things, and their bodies and their thoughts were one. Together they uprooted the tough sod; together they nursed the cane-bloated yearling. And there was sunlight, sun always upon the snow, the grass crisp or green, the warm or frigid Calamus.…
    It had never happened, though. Time had made it incredible. One cannot believe the unbelievable.
    “What you doin’ there?” she wheeze-whined at Robert, and he broke again into giggles. It sounded like “Huh-wat hyooo ha-dooin’ there?”
    “Nothin’,” said Robert.
    “What you wastin’ all your food for?” She motioned puffily at his plate.
    On it were three eggs from which he had carefully trimmed away the whites. He had eaten nothing but the lean part of his meat. He had helped himself generously to hominy before deciding, remembering, rather, that he didn’t like it.
    “I ain’t wasting it, Josephine.”
    “What’s the matter?” said Sherman. “Ain’t we got enough to eat in the house? Maybe we better go over to the neighbors.”
    “We got plenty,” said Josephine, sullenly. “You don’t look like you was starving.”
    “Well, I was beginning to wonder,” said Sherman. And he took the meat platter and scraped a full pound of ham onto Robert’s plate. The boy trimmed the fat from it, but left it otherwise untouched.
    After supper, he and his cousins and Sherman went into the living room. Sherman drew a rocker in front of the cherry-red stove, and the boys ranged themselves, standing, behind it. Sherman lit his pipe, studying them with sour, proud slyness.
    “What kept you so long down there in the cowshed?”
    “Nothin’,” they said in unison.
    “Uh-huh, I’ll bet, by God!”
    “Honest, we wasn’t doing anything, Dad,” said Gus.
    “Well,” said Sherman, “we’ll see.”
    Robert looked into the kitchen, watching the two older girls redd up the dishes. They looked like boys with dresses on. Their hair was cut short—not bobbed—like their brothers’. It would be kept that way until they became young women and would have the leisure to look after it properly. There was no time for hairdressing at their age, and vermin were rife. Practically every farm girl, who was one of a large family, wore her hair short.
    Tiny Ruthie awoke in her high chair, and came in and resumed her slumber on her father’s lap. The other girls disappeared into the milkshed, and presently the cream separator began its whining crescendo. It died down almost before it was well started, the nasal notes fading jerkily as the handle was left unturned.
    “Mama!”
    “What you want now?”
    “Somethin’s funny, Mama. You come here.”
    The floor creaked as Mrs. Fargo waddled into the milkshed.
    “See, Mama. See that stuff.”
    Mrs. Fargo said nothing. She even managed to get back into the kitchen almost noiselessly. Her one tactic was surprise, but she was a master of that.
    She appeared in the door, suddenly, the spittle spraying furiously between her overhung teeth, her little eyes snapping venomously. She seemed to roll across the floor as if she were on coasters, and she cracked a long, leather blacksnake expertly.
    “Yoooo h-whelps,” she wheezed. “You h-ornery devils! Yoooo—”
    Gus and Ted sprang for the stair door, and she slashed the whip across their backs. They reached the door at the same time