JOHNTOWN, TENN.
41 i
the unforgiving bear jaws and the blood-streaked face of the man
peeking from around the hide, "he stood a long distance away, a
perfectly safe distance, mind you, and murdered the defenseless ani–
mal with a rifle. But now that hillbilly stands up there yelling like
an idiot, and thinks he's a hero, and by tomorrow night some other
fool hillbilly will be telling how Jack Harrick strangled the creature
with his hands. Oh, yes," she said, with a last climactic flourish of
the bitterness, "That is Jack Harrick, the hero of all the hillbillies!
The tales they tell about him-just so they can feel big."
The girl found herself looking at the woman now, at the bitter
face now drawn mercilessly, and unconsciously, after the swaying
idiot on the retreating pick-up, and found herself desperately saying
inside herself, as she stared at the woman's face,
I don't want to be
like that, like Miss Abernathy, oh God, don't let me be like that!
She wasn't prepared to say exactly what "that" was that she
did not, suddenly, want to be like, but no prayer she had ever ut–
tered-and she was a sincerely religious girl-had been so urgent.
Then, she turned her eyes after the truck, which was just then
slithering around a corner, and
in
that last glimpse it seemed almost
as though her prayer had been answered. She felt warm and soft
inside. She felt calmly happy, and the sun fell bright over every–
thing, even the churned-up, mud-streaked snow of the street of
Johntown.
With a start, she heard the woman saying, not in bitterness
now, in some sad, fatalistic explanation as it were: "He's a black–
smith."
For a moment Celia Hornby didn't quite connect the remark
with the man on the pick-up truck. It didn't seem, somehow, that
that man had ever had to earn any living, in any way, just living,
flashing through the world, holding up a bloody bear-skin, and
yelling in good humor and joy.
"Blacksmith?" she echoed, pulling herself back to things like
earning livings, and how you did it.
"Yes," the woman said, "a blacksmith!" Then, as though apolo–
gizing for some edge that had been now added to the word, she said:
"Oh, I don't mean it's not a decent, honorable livelihood.
If
it's all
you can do. It's just-"
She stopped herself, like a person who stops on the brink.
