“Oh, no? . . . Well, Brian’s down there in the truck, for your information. We’re going back, him and me, to Roy’s place at daybreak and then I’m goin’ to take the nails out.”
Gareth shook his head, a volley of oaths and curses came out but not so much aimed at Sidney as perhaps at the powers which had bestowed on him life and breath.
“I promised him,” Sidney was going on, “I would bring Brian back so he could see him nailed to the barn.”
Gareth got out of bed and came over and looked at Sidney close all over. Then stooping down Gareth picked Sidney’s hat up and put it on his head, and as he put the hat heavily over his head, his long hair began to fall down but did not fall as long or as far as usual because it was secured this time by a familiar pink cord in the back.
“I’ll see about this,” Gareth admonished him, “and I will be going along to find out if you are totally insane or whether . . .”
He pulled on his pants and ran noiselessly down the long staircase. He opened the screen door, then the storm door, and went out to where the truck was parked. He was gone a long time, in fact Sidney meantime had fallen asleep and had begun to snore.
When Gareth came back into the room he walked like some crippled old man of ninety. He could barely help himself into bed and put his upper body under the counterpane. He made queer little sounds almost like that of a quail when he senses the shadow of a hawk over it. Then he began to cry.
Sidney woke up. “Did you take a peek?” he wanted to know.
Gareth cried on.
“Why don’t you shut up,” Sidney said indifferently. “You might wake up everybody.”
“He don’t look . . . rotten,” Gareth got out now, the horror of what he had seen not yet having completely reached him. “He looks . . . fresh . . .”
“I think,” Sidney began swallowing convulsively, and then he took off his hat and looked inside the crown, “I reckon . . . the coach . . . must have embalmed him lavishly on the sly.”
“He looks alive!” Gareth moaned.
“I think you’re right.”
“But who is the coach, Sid?” Gareth mumbled, rising up in the bed and loosening the covers.
“Why, him of course.”
Gareth Vaisey did not ask more, he was weeping silently now but spasmodically.
“I shouldn’t have told you to,” Gareth kept repeating. “It was my fault . . .”
“No, Garey, no.” Sidney went over to the bed and sat down on it, but the younger man drew violently away from him.
“Kiss me, Garey, please kiss me.”
“No, no . . . I think I will kill myself now.”
“Kiss me, please.” He took hold of Gareth and kissed him wetly, bringing the boy afterwards against his breast.