and black, yellow and black: these came, for Cass, before he was grown, to be the colors of sun and blood, the hue of life and the shade of death. To think of living was to see yellow; to see blood was to think of black. He could never in all his life see blood as crimson—it looked too dark for that. When Cass thought of blood he saw a black rivulet running a rail that gleamed in sunlight—an iron rail gleaming yellowly, as though smiling while it drank.
This was because of a thing which occurred when Cass was not quite sixteen.
All one bright windy morning he had worked in the dooryard. (Stuart had forbidden him to run with Mexican boys.) He had built himself a tire-swing; he had turned a clothes-wringer for Nancy for an hour, and had helped her hang out the washing; he had carried in kindling; he had patched a frayed kite.
And all about him, on the roofs of the houses, aslant the old privy, across the small garden, through air, earth and water—over all things streamed the strong yellow sunlight. As though coming like rain from atop Great-Snake Mountain, the deep yellow sunlight. The good yellow sunlight; and the mad March wind.
He had heard the whistle of the noon freight on the Southern Pacific to Houston—three long and two short blasts—and swiftly, as a thing done every day, he hopped down from his tire-swing and raced toward the S. P. tracks. Even though this train would not be hauling coal, as he knew it would not be, yet it remained a duty to watch it pass. To see the ’boes that would be riding the tank cars, to exchange hand-waves with them, to share the excitement that all there would feel—this would be the event of Cass McKay’s day.
He was almost too late. The engine itself was a quarter of a mile east of town when he arrived, and he was only in time to see the last half-dozen gondolas roll by; she was fast picking up speed, and the brakeman was already back in the cab. Two Mexican section hands and several town boys were standing about a thing atop the cinder embankment. A thing huddled. Yes indeed, it wasn’t often that one could come into town without seeing a sight or two for one’s pains. Eagerly Cass clambered up, small stones slipping beneath his bare feet, stepping over the sagebrush that grew up through the cinders: then he pressed himself roughly between the two Mexicans and saw what they saw.
Face downward in the sand beside a clump of thistle a boy was lying, his right arm flung across his eyes, a boy in a brown shirt and blue corduroy slacks.
Over him a tall man stood looking down as though understanding this all to himself.
The left arm was spewed off slantwise at the shoulder, the jaw hung limp. This Cass saw first. One eye hung out of its socket by one long thin wet thread, the filament rising and falling a little straight up and down as it hung. Someone had pitched a small bundle of clothes to one side and strewn it over with sand.
At the waist, between the dark shirt and a broad bright belt, the side began to tuck in and out in short quick violent little jerks. In—out. One of the Mexicans called shrilly. “Look! Look! See what he do now! In and out he going!” Two of the town boys walked toward the bundle and went off down the tracts with it dangling between them.
And all down the gleaming yellow rail there ran the warm wet blood—warm wet blood running black and slow beneath the unpitying sun; black and slow down an iron rail, darkening small stones as it spilled and seeped, into ties; the blood of heart and brain and sinew wetting a thistle in the sand. And black, black, black; black as darkness on the bright sun’s face.
The thunder of the morning freight faded to a low singing of rails through heat, to die at last in the east into silence.
There never came, in later years, a sunny, windy day in March, but Cass would feel the heart within him pumping, pumping momently; and he would be faintly sickened and half uneasy and somewhat afraid.
Yellow and black, yellow and black—these were the colors of sun and blood, the hue of life and the shade of death, the symbol of flesh and the sign of dust.
In August of 1926 Cass saw blood again. Bryan killed an old housecat that had been around the home for seven years; and he killed the creature by wrenching off its head.
Bryan McKay was easy-natured enough when sober; yet when drunk he could be as cruel as malice itself. One day he noticed the old cat chase one of the hens off the porch, but he paid little attention and went on his way. He knew the old tom never killed anything, not even mice. But three days later, drinking tequila in the town with friends, he remembered, and put his bottle down.
Cass was in the kitchen that morning, painting a shoeshine box for use in town. The old tom was curled on a chair beside the sink, pulsing evenly, after the manner of most good cats. Cass heard Bryan’s voice approaching, and he put his brush aside.
“Chicken-chasin’! Bird-killin’! Sly black egg-suckin’ son-a bitch . . .”
Cass grabbed a newspaper off the stove and threw it over the cat as it slept. Had he not done so Bryan might never have caught him. At Cass’s touch the tom vaulted to the floor and raced directly into Bryan’s hands as Bryan lurched into the doorway. Bryan scooped the cat up and whirled him about like a flywheel, first this way and then that, while his mouth fixed into a hard and crooked grin.
Cass pleaded hoarsely, “Bry’n! Yore hurtin’ him”—then the body, claws still outspread, whanged like a small pillow against the wall above the stove, and the head remained in the hand. Bryan flung this at Cass, and the sun from the doorway was in Cass’s eyes. Fur brushed his shoulder and dampened his cheek. He screamed in fright, in hoarse terror, and in hate. He stared at a ragged head on the door at his feet, saw dark blood seeping into dust there, and touched his cheek with his finger. He stood looking down for minutes after Bryan had left, hand on cheek touching blood. Then, slowly, his hate drowned his fear.
He ran up the road after Bryan, and pounded Bryan’s back with both fists till Bryan whirled and caught him. He held Cass fast, with no drunken fingers, white dark-shawled women paused as they passed and Mexican children gathered to see. For one terrible second Cass thought Bryan was going to twist his head off as he had the cat’s.
“Combate! Combate!” sang the little brown children, leaping and skipping in the sun.
Bryan did not strike. He stood looking down and holding Cass tightly, with all the drunkenness gone out of his fingers. Yet when he spoke Cass thought him still drunk, for what Bryan said made simply no sense at all. Although Cass was squirming and writhing and twisting, yet he heard each word clearly.
“Nothin’ but lies—nobody told nothin’ but Jesus-killin’ lies. Told us it was to fight fo’ this pesthole—told me . . . Oh, ah didn’t believe all they told, none of us did, but we laughed an’ went anyhow. Now, look at me. An’ they won’t never speak truth to you-all neither.”
He released Cass as suddenly as he had seized him and went on his way toward the town, walking slow.
Mexican children trailed Cass all the way toward the house, mocking and inquisitive. “What goin’ on, red-son-of-beetch—eh? What trouble you sons-of-beetch make t’day?”
Back in the kitchen Cass made a coffin out of his shoeshine box and buried the tom within the lilac’s shadow.
Toward the end of that afternoon he was in the living room watching a hawk wheeling in dusk far over the prairie as the prairie night came down. He saw night come walking between the little low houses, down through the winding Mexican alleys. Wind came, bearing sand between houses and trees. He saw sand on the broad road rise, in whirling night-spires, to spread over the roof tops. For a long hour he watched the approaching storm, till all was utterly dark.
