Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [206]
They would sit all ni-i-i-ght and lis-ten,
As we sa-a-a-a-ang
I-i-i-innnn the e-e-e-ev’-ning
By-y-y-y the moo-oo-oo-oonlight.
Alone, contented with himself and the world, he bellowed in a way to make her smile. As soon as he had sung the melody through, he instantly sang the same verse in the bass, as if trying to sing harmony with himself, and she was reminded of the guides Augusta had told her about, who sang two notes up into the ceiling of the baptistry at Pisa, and let the roof fuse them into a fat round chord.
He was as moon-mad as she was. She heard hoof-irons ring on stone-he was getting close. In a few seconds he would ride into the flat and into visibility. Impulsively she skipped into the shadow of the shed, and there, pressing her back against the rounding logs, she waited to surprise him.
The hoofs passed from rock to dust, came close, closer, stopped. “Hoo, boy,” Oliver said. The saddle creaked. She peeked around the corner of the shed and saw his long leg swing over the cantle and around, his body with its back to her jackknifed in the act of dismounting. Then there was a hard, angry grunt, and he was flat on his back in the dust.
She cried out, and sprang from her hiding place to help him. The mule shied sideways, dragging Oliver by the foot still in the stirrup. “Whoa, whoa!” he was saying, and his body convulsed itself upward and his hand caught the stirrup, or his foot. For another few feet he went bumping, and then he and the mule separated. The mule skittered to the far fence and stood wall-eyed in the moonlight. Oliver sat still.
“Oh my dear!” Susan said.
“Great God, what were you trying to do, get me killed?”
“Oh, when you fell I couldn’t help . . . Are you all right? Are you hurt?”
He stood up and beat the dust out of his pants until the moonlight was a palpable haze around him. “No,” he said in a voice thick with disgust. He went to the mule and picked up the trailing reins, wrapped them once around the corral bar, hooked the near stirrup up onto the horn, and fumbled for the latigo on the mule’s dark side. “What are you doing, still up? What’re you doing over here?”
“Just looking at the moon.” When she came and stood close behind him he went on loosening the cinch and did not turn his head. “I heard you singing. I knew something good must have happened. I was going to surprise you. I’m sorry, I should have known better than to jump out like that when you fell.”
“Ugh,” Oliver said. The cinch swung loose under the mule’s belly, the saddle went up on the rail.
“What did happen? They agreed, didn’t they–somebody did. You got some help.”
Now he turned, but not the whole way. His face was shadowed by his hat, he looked off down the canyon. “No,” he said. “They didn’t agree. Nothing happened. I got no help.”
“Oh, Oliver!”
“So far as they’re concerned, the canal’s dead. I’m a good fellow, they like me fine, but they’ve all been burned. They wanted to sell me some stock.”
He sounded like a boy from whom something has been expected, and who has disappointed himself and everybody else. She moved to put her hand on him in comfort, but he turned away and pulled the headstall over the mule’s bending ears. His hand spatted haunch, he walked around Susan as if she had a diameter of ten feet and took the bridle into the shed and brought out the oat can. She heard the disgusted breath whistle through his teeth as he bent to pour the oats on the ground.
“But you were singing so happily!” she said, and now she did come close and lay a hand on his arm. She stopped short, she leaned fiercely to see his face. “You’ve been drinking!”
For the first time, he faced her; she realized that until now he had been trying to breathe around or past her. Their look was long. She saw that he was uncertain, unable to think of anything to say. “Yeah,” he said finally, and turned and reached to set the oat pail upside down on a post. He missed, the pail fell clattering, he stooped and got it and crammed it hard on the post’s top with both hands.
“You’re drunk,” she said. “You can barely stand up. Oh, how could you!