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Page 22
Having detected all forms of degeneracy in the farmer's face Kenny
barricaded the door with a loose plank from the upper step, made sure
it would fall easily with a clatter, examined his revolver and had his
sleep out, thanks to the fact that the day proved cloudy. He awoke to
flies and disillusion. His head ached. His back ached. There was a
spider in his hat. He wanted water. He wanted a brook equipped with a
shower-bath and he wanted the luxury of eating what he chose. Never,
never would he eat cheese again unless the hand of famine gripped him.
Perhaps not then. The sum of his discontent plunged him into a black
temper in which he rehearsed the details of his morning's misadventure
with growing spleen and wished sincerely that Silas would appear again
and roar at him. And, then, gingerly descending the rickety steps,
Kenny remembered that the corncrib was his.
His . . . and not his. For he could not take it with him. It was a
tantalizing thought. Not that he wanted it. God forbid! Ever after
he would hate the sight of a corncrib. He simply resented the notion
of leaving it behind for the vocal entertainment of Silas, who would
likely get up again with the roosters and roar into it at "hoboes."
Yes, the corncrib would revert to Silas, from whom he had merely rented
it for one night at a most appalling price. The improvidence of it
shocked him. Kenny retraced his footsteps in a blaze of indignation
and made a bonfire on the corncrib floor to which in a reckless spasm
of disgust he consigned the remainder of his supper. The crazy
structure caught at once, with a smell of cheese.
Five minutes later Kenny's corncrib was a mass of flames and Silas had
appeared at the end of the field roaring incomprehensible profanity.
Kenny, waiting, whistled softly with a defiant air of calm. The
corncrib was his. He had a perfect right to burn it. He meant to tell
Silas this in a quiet voice, but lost his temper and thundered it
instead. Then in a fury he advanced to meet the disturber of his
morning sleep and made him pay in full for the disillusion of his days
upon the road.
He thrashed Silas into a mood of craven apology and left him with his
head in his hands. To Kenny's disgusted glance he was like the Irish
Grogach of folk lore, who tumbles around among the hills with a good
deal of head and a lax body without much hint of bones. Well, Brian
had thrashed somebody too. There were times when it couldn't be
helped. And Brian had lived in a corncrib at seven cents a day. Kenny
whipped out his notebook.
"One day in a corncrib:" he wrote grimly. "Twenty-five dollars!"
Brian and he were maintaining their customary scale of contrast.
The highway he abandoned almost at once and struck off through the
forest, reflecting with a frown that Silas would doubtless look up the
marshal and demand a warrant for his arrest. Fate was at his heels
again obsessed by a mania for disturbing the peace of mind he craved.
He might even be hunted by a village posse. And bloodhounds! The
adventurous side of this rather pleased him. It simply narrowed down
to this--it behooved him to loiter no longer in the green world of
spring. Penance or no penance he must now try penitential speed. How
on earth had he ever managed to blunder into a country all trees and no
rails?
He found a druid of a brook chanting paganly to trees and moss.
Ordinarily Kenny would have found its music and its shadows infinitely
poetic. Now, wretchedly out of sorts, he plunged his face and hands
into a shady pool with a sigh of vast materialistic content, longed to
linger and cursed the village posse he fancied at his heels. The first
romance of his flight from justice was waning rapidly. With a groan he
plunged on, horribly full of aches and hunger. Always now he would
understand the Gaelic legend of Far Goila, the gaunt Man of Hunger who
goes touring up and down the land in times of famine bringing luck to
those who feed him. Even his taste for cheese was returning. The
holocaust of the morning filled him with bitter regret. As for his
feet, they felt shapeless and huge and fungus-like and full of burning
needles. Oh, for the sandals of power of Fergus Mac Roigh!
At noon in utter desperation he bought a mule.
The mule brayed temptation at him from the fence of a forest shanty. A
negress stood in the doorway. Kenny, in no mood for haggling,
recklessly offered what he thought the mule was worth. It looked
incredibly sturdy. His voice evoked a ragged husband who came up out
of a cellar doorway eating a dwarfed banana. The sight of the banana
made Kenny dizzy with emotion.
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