He went on through the hedge to the hen house. The laying hens had retired but four or five cockerels were feeding in their yard. He chased them into their house and after an undignified scuffle caught one by its yellow legs. The bird squawked for mercy and Coverly spoke to it soothingly, he hoped, as he lay its neck on the block and chopped off its head. He held the struggling body down and away from him to let the blood drain into the ground. Maggie brought him a bucket of scalding water and an old copy of the St. Botolphs
“Can we talk now?” Coverly asked.
“I guess so,” Honora said. She put her elbows on her knees and leaned forward. “You want to talk about the house on River Street?”
“Yes.”
“Well, nobody’ll rent it and nobody’ll buy it and it would break my heart to see it torn down.”
“What is the matter?”
“The Whitehalls rented it in October. They moved in and moved right out again. Then the Haverstraws took it. They lasted a week. Mrs. Haverstraw told everybody in the stores that the house was haunted. But who,” she asked, raising her face, “would there be to haunt the place? Our family has always been a very happy family. None of us have ever paid any attention to ghosts. But just the same it’s all over town.”
“What did Mrs. Haverstraw say?”
“Mrs. Haverstraw spread it around that it’s the ghost of your father.”
“Leander,” Coverly said.
“But what would Leander want to come back and trouble people for?” Honora asked. “It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in ghosts. He just never had any use for them. I’ve heard him say many times that he thought ghosts kept low company. And you know how kind he was. He used to escort flies and moth millers out the door as if they were guests. What would he come back for except to eat a bowl of crackers and milk? Of course he had his faults.”
“Were you with us,” Coverly asked, “the time he smoked a cigarette in church?”
“You must have made that up,” Honora said, fending for the past.
“No,” Coverly said. “It was Christmas Eve and we went to Holy Communion. I remember that he seemed very devout. He was up and down, crossing himself and roaring out the responses. Then before the Benediction he took a cigarette out of his pocket and lighted it. I saw then that he was terribly drunk. I told him, ‘You can’t smoke in church, Daddy,’ but we were in one of the front pews and a lot of people had seen him. What I wanted then was to be the son of Mr. Pluzinski the farmer. I don’t know why, except that the Pluzinskis were all very serious. It seemed to me that if I could only be the son of Mr. Pluzinski I would be happy.”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” Honora said. Then she sighed, changed her tone and added uneasily: “There was something else.”
“What.”
“You remember how he used to give away nickels on the Fourth of July.”
“Oh, yes.” Coverly then saw the front of their house in many colors. A large flag hung from the second floor, its crimson stripes faded to the color of old blood. His father stood on the porch, after the parade and before the ball game, passing out new nickels to a line of children that reached up River Street. The trees were all leafed out and in his reverie the light was quite green.
“Well, as you may remember he kept the nickels in a cigar box. He had painted it black. When I was going through the house I found the box. There were still some nickels in it. Many of them were not real. I believe he made them himself.”
“You mean . . .”
“Shhhh,” said Honora.
“Supper’s ready,” said Maggie.
Honora seemed tired after supper so he kissed her good night in the hallway and walked to his own home on the other side of town. The place had been empty since fall. There was a key on the windowsill and the door swung open onto a strong smell of must. This was the place where he had been conceived and born, where he had awakened to the excellence of life, and there was some keen chagrin at finding the scene of so many dazzling memories smelling of decay; but this, he knew, was the instinctual foolishness that leads us to love permanence when there is none. He turned on the lights in the hall and the parlor and got some logs from the shed. He was absorbed in laying and lighting a fire but when the fire was set he began to feel, surrounded by so many uninhabited rooms, an unreasonable burden of apprehension, as if his presence there were an intrusion.
