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Dorothy looked curiously at the black eye but did not comment on it. Instead, she asked him why he hadn’t packed for a possible flood.
Old Man waved the naked stump of his arm at her.
“It’s the doins a The Old Guy In The Sky. I prayed to the old idiot to stop the rain, but it rained harder’n ever. So I figure it’s really The Old Woman In The Earth who’s kickin up this rain. The Old Guy’s too feeble to stop her. He needs strength. So… I thought about pouring out the blood a a virgin to him, so he kin lap it up and get his muscles back with that. But I give that up, cause there ain’t no such thin anymore, not within a hundred miles a here, anyway.
“So… I been thinkin about goin outside and doin the next best thing, that is pouring a quart or two a beer out on the ground for him. What the Greeks call pourin a liberation to the Gods…”
“Don’t let him drink none a that cheap beer,” warned Gummy. “This rain fallin on us is bad enough. I don’t want no god pukin all over the place.”
He hurled the quart at her. It was empty, because he wasn’t so far gone he’d waste a full or even half-full bottle. But it was smashed against the wall, and since it was worth a nickel’s refund, he accused Gummy of malicious waste.
“If you’d a held still, it woun’t a broke.”
Deena paid no attention to the scene. “I’m pleased to see you, child,” she said. “But it might have been better if you had stayed home tonight.”
She gestured at the picture of her mother, still nailed face inward. “He’s not come out of his evil mood yet.”
“You kin say that again,” mumbled Gummy. “He got a pistol-whippin from that young Limpy Doolan who lives in that packin-box house with the Jantzen bathin suit ad pasted on the side, when Limpy tried to grab Old Kings hat off a Old Man’s head just for fun.”
“Yeah, he tried to grab it,” said Paley. “But I slapped his hand hard. Then he pulls a gun out a his coat pocket with the other hand and hit me in this eye with its butt. That don’t stop me. He sees me comin at him like I’m late for work, and he says he’ll shoot me if I touch him again. My old man din’t raise no silly sons, so I don’t charge him. But I’ll get him sooner or later. And he’ll be limpin in both legs, if he walks at all.
“But I don’t know why I never had nothing but bad luck ever since I got this hat. It ain’t supposed to be that way. It’s supposed to be bringin me all the good luck the Paleys ever had.”
He glared at Dorothy and said, “Do you know what? I had good luck until I showed you that place, you know, the flowers. And then, after you know what, everythin went sour as old milk. What did you do, take the power out a me by doin what you did? Did The Old Woman In The Earth send you to me so you’d draw the muscle and luck and life out a me if I found the hat when Old Guy placed it in my path?” He lurched up from the easy chair, clutched two quarts of beer from the refrigerator to his chest, and staggered toward the door.
Swiftly, Deena ran in front of him and held out her claws at him like a gaunt, enraged alley cat.
“So that’s it! You’ve had the indecency to insult this young girl! You evil beast!”
Old Man halted, swayed, carefully deposited the two quarts on the floor. Then he shuffled to the picture of Deena’s mother and ripped it from the wall. The nails screeched; so did Deena.
“What are you going to do?”
“Somethin I been wantin to do for a long long time. Only I felt sorry for you. Now I don’t. I’m go
“Over my dead body you’ll throw that in the creek!” screamed Deena.
“Have it your way,” he growled, lurching forward and driving her to one side with his shoulder.
Deena grabbed at the frame of the picture he held in his hand, but he hit her over the knuckles with it. Then he lowered it to the floor, keeping it from falling over with his leg while he bent over and picked up the two quarts in his huge hand. Clutching them, he squatted until his stump was level with the top part of the frame. The stump clamped down over the upper part of the frame, he straightened, holding it tightly, lurched toward the door, and was gone into the driving rain and crashing lightning.
Deena stared into the darkness for a moment, then ran after him.
Stu
She ran to the door, looked out, turned back to Gummy.
“What’s got into him?” she cried. “He’s so cruel, yet I know he has a soft heart. Why must he be this way?”
“It’s you,” said Gummy. “He thought it din’t matter how he looked, what he did, he was still a Paley. He thought his sweat would get you like it did all em chicks he was braggin about, no matter how uppity the sweet young thin was. ‘N you hurt him when you din’t dig him. Specially cause he thought more a you ’n anybody before.
“Why’d you think life’s been so miserable for us since he found you? What the hell, a man’s a man, he’s always got the eye for the chicks, right? Deena din’t see that. Deena hates Old Man. But Deena kin’t do without him, either…”
“I have to stop them,” said Dorothy, and she plunged out into the black and white world.
Just outside the door, she halted, bewildered. Behind her, light streamed from the shanty, and to the north was a dim glow from the city of Onaback. But elsewhere was darkness. Darkness, except when the lightning burned away the night for a dazzling frightening second.
It was Deena in her terrycloth robe, Deena now sitting up in the mud, bending forward, shaking with sobs.
“I got down on my knees,” she moaned. “To him, to him. And I begged him to spare my mother. But he said I’d thank him later for freeing me from worshiping a false goddess. He said I’d kiss his hand.”
Deena’s voice rose to a scream. “And then he did it! He tore my blessed mother to bits! Threw her in the creek! I’ll kill him! I’ll kill him!”
Dorothy patted Deena’s shoulder. “There, there. You’d better get back to the house and get dry. It’s a bad thing he’s done, but he’s not in his right mind. Where’d he go?”
“Toward that clump of cottonwoods where the creek runs into the river.”
“You go back,” said Dorothy. “I’ll handle him. I can do it.”
Deena seized her hand.
“Stay away from him. He’s hiding in the woods now. He’s dangerous, dangerous as a wounded boar. Or as one of his ancestors when they were hurt and hunted by ours.”
“Ours?” said Dorothy. “You mean you believe his story?”
“Not all of it. Just part. That tale of his about the mass invasion of Europe and King Paley’s hat is nonsense. Or, at least it’s been distorted through God only knows how many thousands of years. But it’s true he’s at least part Neanderthal. Listen! I’ve fallen low, I’m only a junkman’s whore. Not even that, now—Old Man never touches me anymore, except to hit me. And that’s not his fault, really. I ask for it; I want it.
“But I’m not a moron. I got books from the library, read what they say about the Neanderthal. I studied Old Man carefully. And I know he must be what he says he is. Gummy, too—she’s at least a quarter-breed.”
Dorothy pulled her hand out of Deena’s grip.
“I have to go. I have to talk to Old Man, tell him I’m not seeing him anymore.”
“Stay away from him,” pleaded Deena, again seizing Dorothy’s hand. “You’ll go to talk, and you’ll stay to do what I did. What a score of others did. We let him make love to us becuase he isn’t human. Yet, we found Old Man as human as any man, and some of us stayed after the lust was gone because love had come in.”