No question was ever asked of him. After a time of sickness to which his wife ministered tenderly, he went back to his business and never again let the insanity of love come near him. A man who can’t learn from experience is a fool, he said. Always afterward he had a kind of fearful respect for himself. He had never known that the impulse to kill was in him.
That he had not killed Catherine was an accident. Every blow had been intended to crush her. She was a long time unconscious and a long time half-conscious. She realized her arm was broken and that she must find help if she wanted to live. Wanting to live forced her to drag herself along the dark road, looking for help. She turned in at a gate and almost made the steps of the house before she fainted. The roosters were crowing in the chickenhouse and a gray rim of dawn lay on the east.
Chapter 10
1
When two men live together they usually maintain a kind of shabby neatness out of incipient rage at each other. Two men alone are constantly on the verge of fighting, and they know it. Adam Trask had not been home long before the tensions began to build up. The brothers saw too much of each other and not enough of anyone else.
For a few months they were busy getting Cyrus’s money in order and out at interest. They traveled together to Washington to look at the grave, good stone and on top an iron star with seal and a hole on the top in which to insert the stick for a little flag on Decoration Day. The brothers stood by the grave a long time, then they went away and they didn’t mention Cyrus.
If Cyrus had been dishonest he had done it well. No one asked questions about the money. But the subject was on Charles’ mind.
Back on the farm Adam asked him, “Why don’t you buy some new clothes? You’re a rich man. You act like you’re afraid to spend a penny.”
“I am,” said Charles.
“Why?”
“I might have to give it back.”
“Still harping on that? If there was anything wrong, don’t you think we’d have heard about it by now?”
“I don’t know,” said Charles. “I’d rather not talk about it.”
But that night he brought up the subject again. “There’s one thing bothers me,” he began.
“About the money?”
“Yes, about the money. If you make that much money there’s bound to be a mess.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, papers and account books and bills of sale, notes, figuring—well, we went through Father’s things and there wasn’t none of that.”
“Maybe he burned it up.”
“Maybe he did,” said Charles.
The brothers lived by a routine established by Charles, and he never varied it. Charles awakened on the stroke of four-thirty as surely as though the brass pendulum of the clock had nudged him. He was awake, in fact, a split second before four-thirty. His eyes were open and had blinked once before the high gong struck. For a moment he lay still, looking up into the darkness and scratching his stomach. Then he reached to the table beside his bed and his hand fell exactly on the block of sulphur matches lying there. His fingers pulled a match free and struck it on the side of the block. The sulphur burned its little blue bead before the wood caught. Charles lighted the candle beside his bed. He threw back his blanket and got up. He wore long gray underwear that bagged over his knees and hung loose around his ankles. Yawning, he went to the door, opened it, and called, “Half-past four, Adam. Time to get up. Wake up.”
Adam’s voice was muffled. “Don’t you ever forget?”
“It’s time to get up.” Charles slipped his legs into his pants and hunched them up over his hips. “You don’t have to get up,” he said. “You’re a rich man. You can lay in bed all day.”
“So are you. But we still get up before daylight.”
“You don’t have to get up,” Charles repeated. “But if you’re going to farm, you’d better farm.”
Adam said ruefully, “So we’re going to buy more land so we can do more work.”
“Come off it,” said Charles. “Go back to bed if you want to.”
Adam said, “I bet you couldn’t sleep if you stayed in bed. You know what I bet? I bet you get up because you want to, and then you take credit for it—like taking credit for six fingers.”
Charles went into the kitchen and lighted the lamp. “You can’t lay in bed and run a farm,” he said, and he knocked the ashes through the grate of the stove and tore some paper over the exposed coals and blew until the flames started.
Adam was watching him through the door. “You wouldn’t use a match,” he said.
Charles turned angrily. “You mind your own goddam business. Stop picking at me.”
“All right,” said Adam. “I will. And maybe my business isn’t here.”
“That’s up to you. Any time you want to get out, you go right ahead.”
The quarrel was silly but Adam couldn’t stop it. His voice went on without his willing it, making angry and irritating words. “You’re damn right I’ll go when I want,” he said. “This is my place as much as yours.”
“Then why don’t you do some work on it?”
“Oh, Lord!” Adam said. “What are we fussing about? Let’s not fuss.”
“I don’t want trouble,” said Charles. He scooped lukewarm mush into two bowls and spun them on the table.
The brothers sat down. Charles buttered a slice of bread, gouged out a knifeful of jam, and spread it over the butter. He dug butter for his second slice and left a slop of jam on the butter roll.
“Goddam it, can’t you wipe your knife? Look at that butter!”
Charles laid his knife and the bread on the table and placed his hands palm down on either side. “You better get off the place,” he said.
Adam got up. “I’d rather live in a pigsty,” he said, and he walked out of the house.
2
It was eight months before Charles saw him again. Charles came in from work and found Adam sloshing water on his hair and face from the kitchen bucket.
“Hello,” said Charles. “How are you?”
“Fine,” said Adam.
“Where’d you go?”
“Boston.”
“No place else?”
“No. Just looked at the city.”
The brothers settled back to their old life, but each took precautions against anger. In a way each protected the other and so saved himself. Charles, always the early riser, got breakfast ready before he awakened Adam. And Adam kept the house clean and started a set of books on the farm. In this guarded way they lived for two years before their irritation grew beyond control again.