The Hunger and Other Stories by Charles Beaumont

Author:Charles Beaumont [Beaumont, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Valancourt Books
Published: 2014-07-30T04:00:00+00:00

Last Night the Rain

We’d been clear out to the cemetery and we’d climbed the hill and now it was getting dark—or seemed to be, it had been gray since morning, and wet—but Amy had that look. She said, “Josh,” in her quiet way, and I knew what she wanted to do.

I said, “Let’s go home.”

She shook her head. We were on the road that goes by the Lindamood farm, six miles from town and a mile from the river. Across the farm you could see the brush that went all the way to the bank, thick wild raspberry bushes and stingweeds and grass as high as your waist. Amy was smiling and looking that way.

“It’s late,” I said.

“No it isn’t,” she said, and shook her head again. “Josh, listen!”

I did, but there wasn’t anything to listen to. The cows were frozen solid, it seemed like, and there was no wind to speak of.

“Do you hear it?” she said.

“No,” I said. “Hear what?”

But I knew. One time up in the attic of my folks’ place when it was raining and she’d been sitting at the window for I can’t remember how long—hours—she pulled the same trick. I asked her then what she thought she heard and she said she heard the grass drinking!

I squeezed the horn on my bike, hard, and said, “Amy, come on, let’s go home.” But she didn’t answer or make a move to tell she knew who I was.

“It’s the river,” she said finally, in a whisper.

I got turned around fast and pedaled a few feet and stopped. “Amy, listen, it’s all soaking wet and muddy down there and you’ve got on a good dress.”

She moved her head and looked at me. Sometimes she gave me this look. “I want to see Beckman,” she said.

I wasn’t surprised. It had been in her mind all day and that was why we were here, on this road.

“What makes you think he’s home? He could be anywhere.”

“He’s there,” she said, “and you don’t want to go because you’re afraid of him.”

“That’s a lie,” I said, but it wasn’t, exactly. Beckman always had made me a little afraid. Like the way you’d be afraid of a wild animal that’s behind bars and can’t get at you only sometimes its eyes turn your way. But I wasn’t the only one. Whether they’d admit it or not, most of the people in town were at least nervous of him. He was Indian-old and almost helpless, but there was something about him that wasn’t right. Not just the ragged clothes he wore, or the smell of him, or the way he had of following you around, watching, even; it was just something.

Amy said, “It isn’t for Beckman, anyway. I want to go down to the river.”

“Goddamn it, Amy. I’m not going.”

Her face relaxed. “Then you wait for me, Josh.” She didn’t look like a fourteen-year-old girl at all, but more like a woman who’d gotten her way in spite of everything. I didn’t know what to say.

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