In town he had stalked with fierce impatience from the general store to the post office, and then back down Cedar Street to his car, clutching his purchase with the greediness of a carrion crow eager to take flight. Now, beneath the leaden sky, in his asthmatic wreck of an automobile, he pictured himself as too shrewd and quick-witted to allow a woman's simpering stupidity to weaken his attachment to the land.
A dust storm could stir a man to anger, and rob him of a night's sleep. It could demolish his chicken cots, and embitter him in other ways. But it could also protect him by keeping him hard.
So certain was he of that hardness that the gathering clouds, the dust flurries, and the whistling wind gave him no concern. They seemed to be setting a seal on his purpose, and he was sure that if trouble descended from the sky he would know how to cope with it.
Unfortunately Durkin had no way of knowing that the desert was soon to blossom in ways that were strange. He heard the dull, occasional rumbling, and saw the sky light up far to the east. But his thoughts were on other things. If he had been told that the desert was being used by the Government as an atomic proving ground he would have dismissed the matter with a shrug.
Malice narrows curiosity. In the back seat of the creaking car a small, white cottage caught and held the leaden sky glow, its tiny windows gleaming like uncut jewels.
A man of wide and kindly sympathies would have taken delight in the cottage, for though it was a cheap toy it had been built with great respect for the critical eye of childhood. It had eight rooms, a porch trellis, and a little golden weathercock on its roof.
Durkin smiled spitefully, remembering with grim pleasure the child training article in the popular science magazine which had sent him into town in search of an inexpensive doll house.
The article had contained a great deal of meat, and its impact upon his mind had been remarkably direct. Give a kid a doll house with a mother and father doll inside, and you could find out exactly what he thought of his parents. He'd move the dolls around, and work out his private grudges on them. He'd pretend the dolls were his real parents, and act out what the article had called the family drama.
Yeah, why not? A man had a right to know what his own kids thought of him, hadn't he? Especially if they were stepkids, and owed everything to him. Apart from the fact that the article had been against punishing children the way he'd been punished as a kid—and what better way was there?—its ideas were good.
The article had contained a lot of fancy phrases like "harmful emotional repression," and "healthful release of guilt feelings." But giving a grudge a fancy name didn't change it one bit. If the kids he'd fed and clothed hated him his hand would come down heavy on them. Yes, by heaven. Each whack would ring out like a pistol shot.