Read The Double Hook for Free Online Page A

up. Fencing them in. Shutting out what they never rightly know.
    He thought: Angel can see but Theophil’s let fear grow like fur on his eyes.
    He stood on the doorstep looking at the moon. Stood roped to the ground by his weight of flesh. Reaching out to the white tongue of moonlight so that he might swing up to the cool mouth. Raising his hand to the white glory for which he thirsted. Then remembering: Coyote got the old lady at last.
    He went through the shadows of the trees to find his horse. Untied it. Climbed into the saddle. Swung the horse round with a jerk.
    He was alone under the moon in the white shed of the world.
    I’ll go back to James Potter’s, he said.
8
    Lenchen was coming down the hill behind James Potter’s house. Fear rising. Fear flooding her body as the moonlight flooded the hills. Exposed in the white light like a hawk pulled out and pinned up on a barn door for all to see.
    She had fed full by Felix’s stove and slept a little. Felt the hardness of the saddle under her head, the press of boards, the thin scratch of the saddle blanket pulled round her. Had bedded down for a while in her own gear. Heard from the next room grunts and deep-bellied breath. Taken comfort in huge indifference. Shoved off the terrier which had come growling and sniffing in the dark.
    Then she’d slid away from Felix’s stove. Crossed the creek on foot and climbed the hill so that she could circle her mother’s. Crossed above William’s and seen his late lantern in the feed-lot. Come hoping to surprise James at some last chore.
    Now, because she was afraid, she crept down into the brush on the far side of the creek behind the house.
    James would come. He would take her into the house. Or he would saddle up and take her to town, where men drank beer when they drove beef out for shipping and the red-headed bartender who kept the parrot would say: Mrs. James Potter. I am surprised. Or he would hide her in the hills and creep out with food and covers that he’d somehow stolen from Greta.
    But, indeed, she saw him in his plaid shirt his arms reaching forward saying: Did Kip bring my message? Did Kip tell you I was waiting?
9
    As if drawn by the thought, Kip came up the road towards her. Nearly everyone else was in bed.
    William pulled the sheet up under his chin. His body filled the length of the bed. He rolled over, kicking the covers loose, gathering them over his shoulders.
    It’s curious, he thought, how a man lies down in the ground at last.
    Ara, he called. What’s keeping you? A man doesn’t expect to lie waiting for his wife half the night.
    He heard her pumping some water in the kitchen.
    You’re mighty dainty all of a sudden, he said. I can remember the time you’d be calling out for me to come.
    Prosper had wakened on his mattress. The girl had gone. Her coming had stirred thoughts which buzzed about waiting to torment him. Yet he sank back into the comfort of his flesh, his eyes creased in sleep.
    Angel stirred restlessly under the weight of Theophil’s arm. Theophil moved aside. Grinding his teeth a little. Shoving Felix’s children to the wall.
    Do that Coyote really be prying about? Angel thought. Who says where a woman shall lie but that very woman herself. Who keeps chawing at a man but a man’s own self?
    The Widow lay stiff on her fat feather pillow. She could hear the boy heavy in sleep.
    The girl chose to go. How can God judge, she said.
    But she pulled the covers up over her eyes to shut out the moonlight.
10
    Kip’s mind was on James. James’s strength. James’s weakness. James’s old mother. James and Greta. James and the girl Wagner. The messages he’d taken for James.
    He’s like his old lady, Kip thought. There’s a thing he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know you can’t catch the glory on a hook and hold on to it. That when you fish for the glory you catch the darkness too. That if you hook twice the glory you hook twice the fear. That Coyote plotting to catch the glory for himself