Thad's Watchers: A Study in Expediency

By George Allan England

Taken from "McClure's Magazine," Volume 29, May - October, 1907

They eyed the sleeping old man contemplatively by the crude light of a glass lamp. Rebidee turned his quid in a cheek no tenderer than ox-hide; Alvin sucked at a broken T.D., which gurgled throatily. Alvin's chair was tilted at a perilous angle against the kitchen wall, and his thin, patched knees were drawn up dose under his lantern-jaws.

The old man sighed in his sleep, which was troubled, and half opened his eyes.

"Cur'us, ain't it, how Thad kin sleep with his eyes open?" murmured Rebidee. "That's one thing I cal'late I'd break him of, mighty sudden, if they was any break to him!"

"Shucks! I don't mind it none!" mumbled Alvin around his pipe-stem. "I'd a gret sight ruther have him do that th'n to talk in his sleep same's he doos--mostly 'bout Captoly, too. Seems like he was a-visitin' with her, sometimes; I don't like it, an' wouldn't, not if I set up with him a year. But what common sense kin ehbody expect out of a feller goin' on eighty-six?"

They lapsed into silence for a while. The tick-tack-tick-tack of a square mahogany dock filled the whitewashed kitchen; the pendulum glinted incessantly, playing hide-and-seek behind an oval opening in the painted landscape which adorned the clock's base.

"I hear he's made ye an offer. What was it?" demanded Rebidee abruptly, raking his bristly chin with crooked fingers. He introduced the vital subject with the delicacy of a musth elephant running amuck in a jungle.

"See him through, fer the place," answered Alvin with cheerful brevity. Alvin was eight or ten years younger than Rebidee, but was thoroughly seasoned.

"Goin' to take him up?"

"Dunno yit. Shh-hh!..."

The old man was stirring and blinking; he threatened to wake up, which would have been fatal to any more" visitin'." Alvin noiselessly unlimbered himself from his chair, tiptoed across the room, and stuck a torn envelop down between the lamp-chimney and the brass stay. Thaddeus sighed, nestled like a baby, and dropped back to sleep. He looked very frail and ancient. The twisty veins protruded on his furrowed brows; his hands were long and thin, with brownish mottles here and there. He lay under the coverlets, a mockery of the strong-armed Thaddeus Buck who, even so little as twenty years ago, had "driven river" with the stoutest of the lumber-jacks. His youth had been wild and hot. Now Thaddeus was cold, so cold that even with his bed dragged out into the kitchen he shivered under half a dozen patchwork quilts.

"You might do wuss," opined Rebidee, resuming the conversation exactly where it had been broken off five minutes before. His mind had not moved from that precise point during the interruption.

"Yup."

"The place is wuth four hundurd an' a half--fair-to-middlin' house, though the roof's bad--fairish barn, ice-house, chanst fer hens, woodlot, an' cuts enough hay to winter three or four critters. Why don't you take him up?"

"Well, it ain't all dear profit."

"Ain't? ... "

"Nup. The one what watches him out has got to put up a monyment fer him an' Captoly, not less'n fifty dollars."

"What? ... Fifty? ..."

"That's the figger."

"Jeems Rice! Of all the sinful wastes!... That old skeezucks! Allus ben as poor as pooduc, an' now goin' to blow fifty dollars on a monyment!... "

"Ain't it the 'tarnal limit, though? An' I can't argy it outa him, try as hard's I'm a mind to. Says he's allus worked like a nigger in the woods an' on the river, an' now he wants suthin' to make it up to him--him an' Captoly. Bought his lot more'n six months ago, to Bethel--one o' the best. Goin' to have Captoly took thar, an' himself laid side o' her. I can't make him see the selfishness on't, no way in this world, though I bet I've talked a bookful at him. He's sot, yes, sir, what time he ain't cryin'. I call it downright wicked to spen' money like that, specially as it don't come outa him at all, but outa whoever takes the job here!" Alvin puffed indignantly at the T.D.

"Ain't thar no way to beat him?"

"Don't see none, an' I've studied a heap at it."

"Deck Peverley's got some amazin' bargains in second-handed stones. Mebbe you might git suthin' marked from fifty to thirty-five or even thirty, hey?"

"Nup. Thad, he says it's got to cost fifty--he's riveted solid to tbat p'int--says he'll have it put in the writin's. No way out on't in this world. An' that ain't all, nuther. You remember that little Minervy Buck what used to visit 'em before Captoly was took?"

"Mmmm?"

"Got to give her twenty-five!"

"You--have?"

"Yup."

"Gawd!"

Rebidee vented his emotion by worrying a fresh "chaw" from his plug, much as a dog worries a recalcitrant bone.

"An' do all his purvidin' as long's he hangs on?" he asked presently.

"Sure. P'r'aps you see now why I ain't so over-an'-above anxious 'bout takin' on him up. How'm I goin' to know how long he'll stan' it? If I take this job, I'll have to quit at the mill, an' my dollar a day goes to blazes. That's all right, if he tuckers out inside a reas'nable time; but s'posen he don't--what then? S'posen he has the writin's done, an' I bind myself to 'em, an' then he takes it inta his head he ain't a-goin' fer to die--what then? I've heerd tell of some o' these here old fellers dwindlin' along fer years; an' the Bucks is an all-fired tough stock!"

"Yup; but Thad's ben failin' up fast ever sence Captoly went. You see yourself he ain't no bigger'n a pint o' cider now. I never see a man shrivel like he's done the past year. Then, too, this stroke he's had--first or second?"

Alvin held up two fingers. Rebidee nodded.

"Well," he went on, after a minute's reflection, "I'd hate to give you any bad advice, but reelly I don't think you'd be runnin' a mite o' resk to have Del Cates drive out to-morrer an' do the writin's. Better 'tend to it while he's got his right mind. I think it's a doubt if he keeps it much longer; then you'd lose the place entire, an' never git nawthin' fer the three weeks you ben here, nuther."

"I dunno but you're right, Reb. I'd hate to git beat now, after all I ben through. It's ben danged on pleasant here, some o' the time, all alone with him, helpless an' all--an' he's that pernickety--say! wants his milk het; an' even ast me to read out loud to him, once, outa the Banner. The wusst is his talkin' 'bout Captoly, though. Mournin' an' takin' on all the hull etarnal time. I jest can't stan' it--have to make him shet up--an' then he'll blubber an' beller--oh, it ain't no bed o' roses, watchin' old Buck out, now I'm goin' to tell you! Whether I'd resk a year of it, or six months, fer the sake of this here farm--well, I dunno...."

The clock said Yes-no-yes-no with panicky indecision; old Buck stirred again and stretched his gaunt hand out over the counterpane. Alvin, tamping the ashes down into the heel of his pipe, did not see the gesture; but Rebidee's weasel-eyes caught it.

"Al," said he, "you wait on a bit, an' I'll tell you what to do. I'm waitin' to see suthin', an' if I see what I want to see, why--you--take--him--up!" He spoke impressively, emphasizing each word with a dip of his unseemly forefinger.

"What you waitin' t' see, Reb?"

"Ne'mmind... wait on! I'll bate you fifty cents I hit it right, too, 'bout Thad. Want to take me?"

"Mebbe. I'll see."

Silence again. Alvin, tilting against the wall, nodded, dozed a trifle; the clock said: What-what-what-what?... Rebidee said nothing. He did not doze. His narrow eyes glinted in the lamplight, and his thin cheeks hollowed in profoundly as he gnawed at them with prematurely toothless gums.

All of a sudden: "Thar! See thar!" he whispered, and Alvin came to himself with a start. His eyes leaped to the bed. Old Thad was pawing at the patchwork with fingers like talons--then he reached out into the air, grasping at empty space--then again his fingers busied themselves rapidly with the quilt, picking and picking at the stitches.

Rebidee reached over and dug Alvin facetiously in the lean ribs.

"Say, you!" he whispered, "get onta that? That's what I was waitin' fer--wantin' to see! I give him three days at the outside. Take my bet?"

"Nup. I might lose, an' fifty cents don't grow on every bush in Oxford County. But... but..." he ruminated, "I tell you what I will do, by cripes! You come round here to-morrer an' be witness fer the writin's, an' I'll have Del Cates bring out a long-necker from the Pond. Are you on?"

"Betcher life!"

"Shake on't!"

"Here--an' good luck with the farm! What? Ten o'clock already? Say, I hadn't no idee 'twas so late. Well, I mus' be a-pikin'. What time to-morrer?"

"Oh, middle the aft'noon. Be here sure!"

"Yup." Rebidee tiptoed to the door and quietly opened it. "Shouldn't wonder if it made out to rain 'fore mornin'," said he, peering up at the sky.

"Better not hold the door open, Reb," said Alvin. "If the draft woke him up he might be li'ble to cry all night."

Rebidee vanished. Alvin turned back into the kitchen. The old man's feeble breath sounded like a ghostly sobbing for long-past miseries; his hands groped their thin appeal into empty air, striving for something that has never yet been found on earth. Alvin did not look at him, but opened a Bronco Bill novel and settled himself beside the lamp to watch old Thaddeus "out."

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