The Night of the Hunter Read Online Free

skates in the big rolla-drome across the highway and that record that played over and over again, that one that went, Lucky Lindy up in the air! Lucky Lindy flew over there! and he had dreamed of the life they would have together in the house down in the bottomlands above Cresap’s Landing and how he would get himself a raise at the hardware store and buy her a player piano. It was funny how it had always been a matter of money. Right up to the very end. Even that day at the prison she kept asking him about it—the ten thousand dollars he had hidden somewhere. She kept saying over and over that it wasn’t going to do him any good and he had no right to leave her and the two kids without anything but that old bottomlands house her Uncle Harry had left her. Nothing but that and the clothes on their backs. But he would not tell. And it made him sick at his stomach to sit there on the other side of the chicken wire and see her mouth saying it over and over again until her face began to look for all the world like the face of Preacher; weak and sick with greed; the same greed that had led Ben to murder and the gallows. He watched her eyes all bright and feverish with hope of finding out, her little pink tongue licking her dry lips with the excitement of it and, at last her mouth gone slack with disappointment when she realized that he would not tell—that he would never tell.
    That same afternoon Mister McGlumphey, his lawyer, had been to see him, too. There was no getting around it—they had all been mighty nice to him at his trial. Mister McGlumphey had done his very best to get him off with life imprisonment and the jury was as nice a bunch of people as you’d want to see and he thought to himself many times since: I wish them no harm nor vengeance in this world or the other. Mister McGlumphey had told him at the outset that it would sure go easier with him if he was to tell what he’d done with that ten thousand dollars and it was really then that Ben had made up his mind not to tell. Because any poor fool could see that it wasn’t justice they were after—it was the ten thousand dollars. So Ben simply said that he wouldn’t tell them even if they was to break his arms and legs to make him tell and Mister McGlumphey said they wouldn’t do anything like that but they’d like as not break worse than that and he couldn’t see any possible way to save him from swinging if he felt that way about it. And so Ben was more sure than ever that he was right. And he concluded with grim Calvinist logic that if he needed to tell them about the money to be spared the hanging then there was no real justice in the courts and so he would take his satisfaction with him to the grave. It was Sin and Greed that had brought him to Moundsville and it was Sin and Greed that was making them hang him. It was the face of Willa begging and wheedling behind the chicken wire. It was the face of Mister McGlumphey arguing. It was the voice of Preacher in the dark.
    Where? Where, Ben? Where? Have a heart, boy. Where, Ben? Where?
    He awoke. The corner of the moon was gone from the window. The blue square was empty except for the ragged thatch of Preacher’s head inches from his own. Ben gathered himself slowly under his blanket and let his muscles coil like a steel spring and then lashed out with all his strength until he felt his hard fist crunch into the bones of the whispering face. Ben, you hadn’t ought to have hit me! I’m a man of God!
    You’re a son of a bitch! Sneaking up and whispering in my ear whilst I’m sleeping! Hoping you could make me talk about it in my sleep! Damn you, Preacher! Damn you to hell!
    Just the same you shouldn’t have done it, boy! I’m a man of the Lord!
    You’re a slobberin’ hypocrite, Preacher! Now get the hell back up in your bunk before I smash your head in! I’d as soon hang for three killin’s as two!
    Ben lies rigid now, listening as the other scrambles fearfully up into the rustling straw tick and