The milk truck finally dived into the stream of traffic and the bus moved into position. I let my eyes close and my head sink back again, euphoria tingling with a taste of confidence. “How about it, fellas?” I inquired of those standing in the nearby shadows. “Does Little Leland have any sort of chance against this illiterate spook who has charged out of the past to once more goad me with his grin? Do I actually have a chance to wrest from him the life that I have been cheated out of, the life that we both knew was mine? Rightfully mine? Justly mine?” Before any of my friends present can answer, the ghost himself slips out of the melting shadows and raps me over the head with a bladder, knocking loose a hailstorm of silver barbiturate burrs. Still drunk with confidence, I half rose from my seat to demand of the grinning giant looming above me in a sweat shirt, number 88, “Whither wilt thou lead me?” fixing him with the most withering Shakespearean gaze my goof-balled eyes could muster. “Speak, I’ll go no further.” “Oh?” A sneer played at his lip. “You’ll go no further, is it? The hell if you won’t! Now you get your tail on over here an’ sit it down; didn’t you hear me callin’ you?” “You’ve no hold on me”—in a quavering voice—“no hold at all.” “Why, willya listen at this: he says I ain’t got no hold on him. Boys, you hear that: I got no hold on smart-ass here. Bub, you look: I aim t’ ast you purty-please just one more time, then lose my patience. So move, blast you! An’ quit that fidgetin’ around! Stan’ still! Move, I tell ye!” Our young hero, cowed and bullied and in a furor of frustration, plops to the ground quivering with protoplasmic confusion. The giant prods the glob with the toe of his spiked logging boot. “Gaa. Look what a mess he went an’ made. Well, jeez . . . boys!” He raises his head and calls, “Dip him up an’ get him on in the house fertheshitsakes so’s we can get on with this business. Jeez, look at him...” A horde of kinsmen rush forth from the wings; their plaid shirts, spike boots, and manly physiques bespeak the logging trade; a uniformity of features indicates they are all members of the same family, for they all boast noble Roman noses, sandy-brown hair wafted free by the fragrant northern breezes, and iron-green eyes. They are ruggedly handsome. All save the Smallest Fellow, whose face has been horribly mutilated by constant use as the family dartboard; the darts are barbed and the flesh hangs in shreds where the barbs have torn it. This poor wretch trips in his haste and falls in a heap. The giant leans down and picks him up between a great thumb and forefinger and regards him with the kindly scorn one might reserve for a cricket. “Joe Ben,” the giant says patiently, “ain’t I tole you ’bout thisyere fumble-fart-an’-fallin’ down all the time? Don’t you know that it’s call to get you drummed right out o’ the clan if you keep on? What’d folks think, a Stamper ploppin’ on his butt all the time? Now hop it up an’ get on over yonder an’ help your cousins sop my kid brother up before he drains away down the gopher holes. Now git!” He places the Smallest Fellow on the ground and fondly watches him scuttle to the sopping. “Good ol’ Joby.” Hank smiles after the lovable little gnome in a manner to betray the tender heart that beats beneath his rough exterior. “I’m might glad old Henry didn’t have him drownt like he did the rest of the runts; Joe’s good fer a lotta laughs.” By this time the kinsmen have managed to contain our melted hero and are bearing him toward the house in a polyethylene bag; during the passage across the spacious and tastefully landscaped front bog the plucky lad overcomes his fright enough to gradually pull himself back to some semblance of human form. The house is disguised as a pile of discarded scrap lumber stacked precariously into the clouds; the door, which can be opened only by the insertion of a log in an enormous keyhole, swings inward, and for an instant young Leland can make out through his transparent confines the dim trappings of a spacious hall—mastiffs stalking among great fir-tree pillars wherein double-edged axes are stuck, sheepskin mackinaws hanging carelessly on their handles—then the door swings shut with a booming echo that reverberates off distant walls, and all is dark once again. This is mighty Stamper Hall. It was built sometime during the reign of Henry (Stamper) the Eighth and for centuries has been condemned by every public-safety agency in the land. Water can be heard dripping even in the severest drought, and the long maze of decaying corridors is filled with constant dark scurryings and a continual drumming of blind frogs. At intervals these sounds are broken by the thundering collapse of an obscure wing of the house, and entire branches of the family have disappeared into its passageways never to be heard from again. The domain is an absolute monarchy in which no one dares make a move, not even the crown prince himself, without first consulting the Great Ruler. Hank steps to the head of the band of kinsmen and cups his hands about his mouth to summon this exalted potentate. “Oh...PAW!” The roar rolls rumbling through the inky blackness, crashing into wooden walls. He yells again and this time a candle comes in the distance, illuminating first the craggy profile, then the whole grisly visage of old Henry Stamper. He is sitting in a rocking chair waiting to be a hundred. His hawklike beak turns slowly in the direction of his son’s voice. His hawklike eyes pierce the gloom. He coughs loudly and spits a blazing ember hissing through the damp air. He coughs again and speaks, looking at the plastic sack. “Wellsir now...aye doggies ...heeheehee ...lookee yonder...
how’s ’bout that. What in tarnation you youngsters found floatin’ in the river this time? I swan, allus draggin’ in some crap or other . . .” “Didn’t rightly find it, Pa; sorter conjured it up.” “You don’t tell me!” He leans forward, displaying more interest. “Nasty-lookin’ outfit . . . what you reckon it be? Some-thin’ come in on the tide?” “I’m afeared, Pa”—Hank hangs his head and scuffs his toe at the floor, shredding white pine in all directions with his spikes—“that it be”—scratches his belly, swallows—“be yer youngest son, Leland Stanford.” “Damnation! I told you once I told you a friggin’ hunnert times, I don’t never! want the name o’ that quitter! spoke in thisyere house again! Phoo. Cain’t stand the sound of him, lit-lone the sight! Jesus, son, what got into you to pull such a boner?” Hank steps closer to the throne. “Paw, I knowed how ya felt. I cain’t help but feel the same way myself—worst, mebbe, comes down to it; I’d as leave never heard his name again the rest o’ my nachrul life—but I didn’t see no way gettin’ around it, considerin’ the situation we is in.” “What situation!” “The labor situation.” “You mean—” The old man gasps; his hand lifts in a gesture of involuntary horror. “I’m afeared so. We come to the end of the bench, old fellow, to the last of the beans. You knowed when we saved out Joe Ben that we was scrapin’ the bottom of the barrel. So it was like we didn’t have a choice, Pa . . .” He crosses his arms, waiting. . . . (In the low mountains the crows sleep fitfully. Jenny works with need and loneliness and the magic of her ignorance. At the old house the discussion of Joe Ben’s idea for writing other relatives in other states is halted suddenly by Orland’s demand to see the books. “I’ll bring them right down,” Hank volunteers and heads for the steps . . . welcoming the opportunity to leave the noise and hubbub for a moment . . .) Henry stares forlornly at young Leland, who is feebly waving at his venerable father from inside the plastic bag. Henry wags his old head. “So. This is how it is, eh? It’s finally come to this.” Then, fired by a sudden fury, he lurches standing from the chair and shakes his cane at the cringing kinsmen. “Ain’t I been tellin’ you boys this was a-comin’? Ain’t I been sayin’ till I’m blue in the face, ‘Leave off this diddlin’ of your cousins and sisters an’ the like an’ get out an’ knock us up some other women fer a change!’ I’m sick ’n tired of all these freaks an’ halfwits you been turnin’ out. We cain’t be inbreedin’ all the time like a buncha damn hawgs! The family got to be healthy an’ strong t’ keep up the standards. I don’t aim to tolerate weaklings! No, b’ gawd, I don’t. We need examples by gawd, like my own boy, Hank there, like the stock I turn out—” His face freezes for an instant as his eyes light once more on the plastic sack, then his stoic features shatter with humiliation. He collapses backward into his rocker, gasping and clutching at his tormented heart. When the fit has passed, Hank goes on in a subdued voice: “I know how it galls ya, Pa. I know how he took away your young an’ faithful wife with his weakness an’ his whining. But here’s how it looked to me when I realized we had to bring up the un-pleasant subject.” He rolls a log up close and seats himself, becoming confidential. “I figured ...that we’re a family first, and that’s the most important. We got to keep ourselfs free of racial pollution. We ain’t some bunch o’ niggers or Jews or ordinary people; we’re Stampers.” A flourish of trumpets; Hank, tin hat in hand, waits for the ranks to finish the Family Anthem. “An’ that the most important thing was to keep them ordinary people from by God ever fergittin’ it!” Shouts and whistles. “You tell ’em, Hank!” “Thatsa boy!” “Yeh!” “An’ the only way we gonna do that ...is keep our empire goin’, come hell or high water; no matter what degree of family scum it takes—that’s how to prove what a superior race we are.” More applause. Jaws become grim and nod in terse, manly affirmative. Old Henry dries his eyes and swallows. Hank is standing. He jerks one of his handy axes from a pillar and waves it about dramatically. “An’ didn’t we all sign in blood that we’d by god fight to our last by god man? Okay then...let’s fight.” More trumpets. The men join Hank in a closed-rank march about a flag mounted in the center of the hall.