The Morning and the Evening Read Free

whispered, “Quit now,” and he quit.
    He looked where the little girl looked, watched the man on the horse again. The man opened his mouth and began to sing. Jake rocked back and forth on his campstool as the man rocked back and forth on his horse, and he heard the singing inside him, smiling to himself. He had known for a long time that he could sing. Whenever he was alone he would sing, but he kept it a secret.
    The man sang loudly and Jake grinned now, knowing the sounds in him to be the same as the man made. When the child next to him, lost in the movie, leaned against his shoulder, he turned and looked at her face, small, perspiring, open-mouthed; he saw her breath going in time to the music, and he remembered her voice touching his ear, her hand touching his face a long time ago, and it came to him suddenly to tell her he could sing. Softly, with closed eyes, he began to sing, wanting just this one small face to know his secret. Abruptly the face hissed close to his, snakelike, “Shhh, you shut up that moanin’,” and he felt a breeze beat in his face very hard. He opened his eyes and looked into an angry face with a tongue shooting out like the snake’s did, with eyes that were two hard slits. The woman had jerked the little girl away, was there in her place.
    Jake turned away frightened, hunched up on his stool, keeping himself away, his song forgotten. Was he supposed to run? He did not know. He sat on in the dark, trembling until his back began to ache so he had to move. Cautiously he slid his feet from under the stool, gradually straightened his cramped legs; the face didn’t turn on him. Stealthily then he eased out his back, sat up. Over the head in front of him he saw the movie again.
    A man got off a horse, went up to a girl, stroked her long hair, talking softly. Jake’s eyes followed the stroking up and down, and slowly his fingers began to curl, uncurl, against the rough knee of his overalls.
    â€œShh, shh,” the snake face said. Jake jumped, but the face was not looking at him; it was turned toward the back where the little boys hooted like owls.
    He watched the stroking again—soft, soft, he knew, remembering Sarah Jane. He began to ache, remembering Sarah Jane.
    â€œSarah Jane, Sarah Jane,” he would moan softly over and over, stroking her. And she never moved, she never pulled away from him. She just listened to him. When he had finished all he had to say, she would look at him with unwavering eyes. Spent with telling at last, he would sit down then and, leaning his head into her stomach, begin to milk her. When the sweet, warm milk came, he would sometimes begin to cry, because of the stillness and the listening that was Sarah Jane; he would tell her then how she was the only one who would listen. But soon his mother would come running down to the cowshed, screaming, “Get away from her now, Jake. Get away!” And she would take him away. All the time going to the house he tried to tell her about Sarah Jane, but she would say, “Hush now, hush.” Then he would cry, looking back at Sarah Jane watching him with her calm brown eyes.
    When the man stopped stroking, Jake’s fingers hesitated, half curled. He sat waiting, but the screen flickered, the scene changed, and the man was gone. There were horses instead, pounding frightfully going over a hill, and the sound of gunshots. Not only the next face but all the faces hissed, and twenty-five pairs of feet thudded dully against the sawdust. Jake laughed, picked up one of his feet, then the other, set each down in the sawdust, stomping too.
    Suddenly through a cloud of dust on the screen, he saw a cow face come toward him with wild frightened eyes, mooing loudly and mournfully. He stood up. “Sarah Jane, Sarah Jane,” he cried out, a gaunt figure waving mute and frantic arms before the onrushing herd of cattle.
    â€œSarah Jane, Sarah Jane,” he called again and again, beginning