The Night of the Hunter Read Free Page B

in the lower bunk.
    I could build a tabernacle, Ben, he whimpers. To beat that Wheeling Island tabernacle to hell and gone! Think of it, Ben. A tabernacle built with that ten thousand dollars of cursed, bloodied gold. But wait, Ben! Now it’s God’s gold. Thousands of sinners and whores and drunkards flocking to hear His word and all because you give that money to build a temple in His name. Listen to me, boy! You reckon the Lord wouldn’t change His mind about you after that? Why, shoot, Ben! He wouldn’t let them little old killings stand between you and the gates of Glory. Hell, no!
    Ben rises on his elbow, tired of the game now.
    Shut up, Preacher! Shut up and go to sleep before I climb over there and stuff your bed tick down your throat!
    Silence again. Preacher up there in the darkness, in the thick, creosote silence of the vast prison. Preacher lying up there on his back with those tattooed fingers criss-crossed behind his sandy, shaggy head thinking how he can worm it out of Ben Harper with only three days to the death house. Ben stuffs his knuckles into his teeth till he tastes blood. The ropes beneath his straw tick squeak to the rhythm of his ague-like trembling. Ben Harper is quaking with agony beneath the little dream that the night’s blue fingers reach out to him. Once more it is that winter afternoon on the river shore by the old house up the road from Cresap’s Landing. He is looking into the moon faces of the children: Pearl stony and silent as a graveyard cherub and John’s big eyes wide with everything Ben was telling him, while Pearl clutched the old doll against her body.
    Where you goin’ to, Dad?
    Away, John! Away!
    You’re bleedin’, Dad.
    It’s nothin’, boy. Just a scratched shoulder.
    But there’s blood, Dad.
    Hush, John! Mind what I told you to do.
    Yes, Dad.
    And you, Pearl! You, too. Mind now! You swore!
    Now, from the corner of his eye, Ben sees the blue men with the guns in the big touring car coming down the road beyond the corner of the orchard. John’s mouth is a white little line as his dark eyes follow the blue men. They circle and walk slowly in through the dead grass that rims the yard.
    Now I’m goin’ away, boy.
    John’s mouth breaks and trembles but then it tightens back into the thinness again. He makes no sound.
    Just mind everything I told you, John.
    Yes, Dad.
    And take good care of Pearl. Guard her with your life, boy.
    Yes, Dad.
    Who’s them men? whispers Pearl at last.
    Never mind them. They come and I’m goin’ off with them, children. Don’t even waste time thinkin’ about that now. Just mind what I told you—mind what you swore to do, boy!
    Yes!
    Swear to it again, John. Swear, boy!
    I swear! I swear!
    Ben Harper lies in his bunk now with the sweat beaded like morning dew on his forehead. He does not move lest Preacher may sense that he is awake, frightened beyond all reason or caution, and think that now is the time to break the seal at last and end his quest for the knowledge of the hidden money. But Preacher is snoring and mumbling in his sleep about Sin and Gold and the Blood of the Lamb, and Ben relaxes after a spell and watches the edge of the winter moon in the window, just the rim of it in the blue square of window with the corner of one of the wall towers black like a child’s school cut-out with the sharp little machine gun sticking out. He closes his eyes, thinking of the day just ended. His wife Willa had been allowed to see him that morning. He looked at her there on the other side of the chicken wire and wanted to say things to her that he hadn’t felt in a longer time than he could remember. Back in the spring of 1928 when they had run off to Elkton, Maryland, and gotten married and spent the first whole night together in a tourist cabin making love the way she had always wanted it to be instead of sneaking off somewhere to do it. He had thought about how all that honeymoon night they had listened to the whirr and roar of the roller