Manhunt. Volume 2, Number 10, December, 1954

Twilight by Hal Harwood

I’ll never forget the way it happened. I’ll remember every detail of that night as long as I live...

It happened a long, long time ago, but I won’t ever forget my father’s face that day. It was my thirteenth birthday, and Pa and me were doing the night’s chores as always on our little scrap of land right next to the river bottom. I had slopped the hogs while Pa was milking our one skinny cow, and after bringing hay to the two old plow horses at the barn, we’d be finished.

We had an old wagon we hauled loose hay in, and it was standing about halfway between the house and our old barn. I had just finished pitching hay from the wagon and taking it to the barn when I heard the first faraway sound. By the time I was back to the wagon and leaning on the long-handled pitch-fork, I knew what the sound was. When I turned around, Pa was right beside me, and I saw he had heard it too. Away off in the distance it was, and we both looked across the dusty road in front of our place towards the woods covering the hills.

I didn’t say anything, just looked up at Pa. His steady eyes were worried, but his face didn’t show anything right then. He wiped the sweat off his forehead with a shirtsleeve, and ran his big hand through the short hair on my head as he turned to the house. I followed him and wondered just what the trouble was going to be like this time. I was already shaking a little, but I didn’t want Pa to know that.

When Pa got to the house, I thought he was going inside and I started in too. But when I went up the steps, he stopped and sat down, reaching up to pull me down alongside him. I sat there shivering a little, not knowing what to expect, and not wanting Pa to know I was scared.

I looked toward the hills again, right into one of the prettiest sunsets I ever saw, and it scared me more. It wasn’t long before the sun would go down, but right now it was nesting in soft clouds piled up like white cotton just poured out of a sack. The sun was turning the clouds every color, but all I could see looked like they were filling with dark red blood and about to burst. I really shivered then, and hugged closer to Pa’s knee.

When the baying sounded again, it was much closer. Like it was just over the hill in front of us. The baying came louder, and I could feel Pa stiffen. I did too when I saw what he was looking at across the road. We both stood up as a man broke through the trees and fell in the road, the soft dust clouding up around him till he was covered with it. He raised his head out of the dust to look at the house, and crawled slowly to his feet.

We could hear his breathing from where we stood. Thin and high and ragged, like a winded horse in pain. He staggered across the road then and leaned against the big gate leading into our lot. The dust had powdered his kinky black hair, making it white. His broad black face was streaked with dust and blood from the cuts and scratches of the briars and trees he’d run through. His blue shirt and overalls were torn and splotched dark with heavy sweat. He had only one shoe on, and I could see the ground go red and dark where his one bare foot rested.

As he stood there gulping in big breaths of air, he looked straight at Pa. His thick lips were pulled back from the large white teeth in a fixed grin as if everything was a big joke. The red tongue came out trying to lick the lips, but it had a hard time getting past the teeth. There was a dried, cottony paste on his mouth and nose, and I could see that he couldn’t get his lips together again.

He stood there gazing at Pa and Pa looking at him. As I stared too, I could hear the bloodhounds coming on the other side of the hill. But the man at the gate didn’t seem to hear or care. There was fear on his face all right, a sort of little-boy fear like mine. He looked as if he wasn’t scared about what he’d done, whatever they were chasing him for, nor what they’d do when they caught him. Just that look of being afraid of something else.

I thought for a second Pa was going into the house, but he didn’t. His legs seemed to give out and he sat down again, pulling me down too and placing his arm around my shoulders hard. When Pa sat down, the man shut his eyes and turned his head away, then opened the gate.

He stumbled into the lot and fell, but crawled up again and finally reached the wagon. He hung on the wagon and turned to look at the woods. His black face fell over sideways as he listened, and I could see that he was crying. As the baying of the hounds came louder and louder, he pulled up and over the side of the wagon and burrowed down in the loose hay.

When my scared eyes came back to Pa, I could see his face was bunched and hard, and there was a muscle thumping in the side of his neck. His eyes were sad and faraway, looking through the wagon and barn and clear to the river.

We both jumped and turned to the road again when the first bloodhound came through the trees. He was big and ugly, with dripping jaws and red eyes that looked mean. There was a short piece of chain fastened to his collar and he was pulling a skinny little man along behind him. The man was tired and acted meaner than the dog as he jerked hard on the chain to slow the dog down.

Another hound and chain and man came through the trees on the heels of the first. They looked about like the first two, except the second man was having more trouble holding his dog. They both managed to haul the hounds down into the dirt of the road as they reached it, and there waited and rested, staring across the road at us.

Behind them five men came out of the woods spread out in a line and about ten yards apart. They stared at the two men and their dogs in the road, and then at Pa and me sitting on our front step. I recognized three of them as farmers, and one as the blacksmith who worked in a shed next the general store. The other man leading them was the storeowner.

The storeowner glared at Pa and me for a long minute, and I could feel Pa’s hand tighten on my shoulder to stop my trembling. All the men had shotguns ready in their hands as they went over to where the dogs were struggling in the dust on their chains. The men stood there whispering and looking at the house and the barn. Finally, the store-owner said something in a low voice to the two hound men, and they started again, with the hounds scrambling to the gate.

Both bloodhounds clawed hard through the gate, barely stopping at the dark wet spot in the dirt. They pulled harder as they came to the wagon, and low, rumbling moans slobbered from their dripping jaws. When the dogs reached the wagon, both of them tried to climb up the side and were jerked back. Their deep bellowing cries were making such a racket now that it was hard to hear anything.

One of the farmers laid his gun on the ground and picked up the pitchfork that I’d dropped by the wagon. He stepped up on one of the wheels and plunged the fork into the hay, up and down as hard as he could. After stabbing three or four times, he hit something and jumped off the wheel, leaving the pitchfork standing straight and quivering in the wagon. The black man hidden in the hay jumped up, throwing the hay in every direction, with the fork stuck right through his middle.

He stood there with his long arms stretched to the sky, paying no attention to the men and the guns pointed at him. His streaked bloody face reached for the heavens too, and I stared at the warm, rosy glow that bathed it. For just a tiny beat of time there was a fearsome quiet. Even the snarling dogs were still.

“Oh, Lord...” the black man called, and then the shotguns drowned him out. The heavy blasts shook Pa and me where we sat on the steps, their ugly red voices cutting through the deep purple of the twilight. Pa pulled my head down on his chest, but my eyes stayed on the black man swaying in the wagon. I saw one of the stretching hands disappear and a shredded stub take its place. The shining, reaching face turned into a red mush, and two big holes spilled out on his straining body. Then the dead man fell out of the wagon into the dirt of the lot, and it was quiet again.

The men watched as the dirt around the body got darker and wetter, then they turned quickly to the gate. When they all had gone through, one of them very carefully closed and latched it. Pulling the hounds with them, they crossed the dirt road, with never a look at Pa and me, and entered the woods again.

When they were gone at last, I was sobbing in big hard gulps as I turned to look at Pa. He was still staring toward the wagon, and I’d never seen a face grabbed with so much pain. It was all there for me to see and understand, and I sat there and was sick with the understanding.

I don’t know why, but after awhile I had sort of a proud feeling when I looked at Pa, and then it didn’t hurt so bad to go out in the dirt of the lot to help him pick up the body of my brother.