The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor [18]
“Don’t open that winder, boy. Us don’t want no wildcat jumpin’ in here.”
“I could er gone wit ‘em,” he said sullenly. “I could er smelled it out. I ain’t afraid.” Shut up wit these women like he one too.
“Reba say she kin smell it herself.”
He heard the old woman groan in the corner. “They ain’t gonna do no good out huntin’ it,” she whined. “It here. It right around here. Ef it jump in this room it gonna git me fust, then it gonna git that boy, then it gonna git…”
“Hush yo’ mouth, Reba,” he heard his mother say. “I look after my boy.”
He could look after hissef. He warn’t afraid. He could smell it—him an’ Reba could. It’d jump on them fust; fust Reba an’ then him. It was the shape of a reg’lar cat only bigger, his mother said. An’ where you felt the sharp points on a house eat’s foot, you felt big knife claws in a wildcat’s, an’ knife teeth, too; an’ it breathed heat an’ spit wet lime. Gabriel could feel its claws in his shoulders and its teeth in his throat. But he wouldn’t let ‘em stay there. He’d lock his arms ‘round its body an’ feel up for its neck an’ jerk its head back an’ go down wit it on the floor until its claws dropped away from his shoulders. Beat, beat, beat its head, beat, beat beat….
“Who wit Ol’ Hezuh?” one of the women asked.
“Jus’ Nancy.”
“Oughter be somebody else down there,” his mother said softly.
Reba moaned. “Anybody go out gonna git sprung on befo’ they gits there. It around here, I say. It gittin’ closer an’ closer. It gonna git me sho.”
He could smell it strong.
“How it gonna git in here? Yawl jus’ frettin’ for nothin’.”
That was Thin Minnie. Nothin’ could git her. She’d had a spell on her since when she was small—put there by a conjer woman.
“It come in easy ef it wanter,” Reba snorted. “It tear up that cat hole an’ come through.”
“We could be down to Nancy’s by then,” Minnie snitfed.
“Yawl could,” the old woman muttered.
Him an’ her couldn’t, he knew. But he’d stay an’ fight it. You see that blin’ boy there? He the one kill the wildcat!
Reba started groaning.
“Hush that!” his mother ordered.
The groaning turned into singing—low in her throat.
“Lord, Lord,
Gonna see yo’ pilgrim today.
Lord, Lord, Gonna see yo’..”
“Hush!” his mother hissed. “What that I hear?”
Gabriel leaned forward in the silence; stiff, ready.
It was a thump, thump and maybe a snarl, away, muffled, and then a shriek, far away, then louder and louder, closer and closer, over the edge of the hill into the yard and up on the porch. The cabin was shaking with the weight of a body against the door. There was the feel of a rush inside the room and the scream was let in. Nancy!
“It got him!” she screamed. “Got him, sprung in through the winder, got him in the throat. Hezuh,” she wailed, “Ol’ Hezuh.”
Later in the night the men returned, carrying a rabbit and two squirrels.
III
Old Gabriel crept back through the darkness to his bed. He could sit in the chair a while or he could lie down. He eased down in the bed and pushed his nose into the feel and smell of the quilt. They won’t no use to do that. He could smell the other jus’ the same. He had been smellin’ it, been srnellin’ it ever since they started talkin’ about it. There it was one evenin’—different from all the smells around, different from niggers’ and cows’ an’ ground smells. Wildcat. Tull Williams seen it jump on a bull.
Gabriel sat up suddenly. It was nearer. He got out the bed and pushed to the door. He had bolted that one; the other must be open. A breeze was coming in and he walked in it until he felt the night air full in his face. This one was open. He slammed it shut and pushed the bolt in. What was the use to do that? Ef the cat aimed on comin’ in, it could git there. He went back to the chair and sat down. It come in east ef it wanta. There were little drafts all around him. By the door there was a hole the hound could git under; that cat could gnaw it through an’ be in befo’ he got out. Maybe ef he sat by the back do’, he could git away quicker.