Heart's Kindred

by Zona Gale

“U. S. To Declare War To-Day.”

The Inger slept again, and this time the clamor and crashing of the thing were upon him. This now was war—but not as he had imagined it. He was in no excitement, no enthusiasm, even no horror. He was merely looking for a chance to kill—keenly, methodically, looking for a chance to kill. In the ranks beside him was that old madman from the kitchen—but there was no time even to think of this. They were all very busy. Then it grew dark, and the field went swimming out in stars, and many voices came calling and these met where he was:

“God—God—they’ve killed God....” the voices cried.

Again the nameless terror shook him. What if he had been the one to kill God? He sought wildly among piles of the dead to find God, and he was not found. Then many came and touched him and stared in his face, and he understood them. God had not been killed at all. He himself was God and he had been killing men....

At this the terror that was on him was like nothing that he had ever known. It took him and tore him, and he writhed under a nameless sense of the irreparable, which ate at him, living. When he awoke, he lay weakly grateful that the thing was not true. Something swam through his head, and he tried to capture it—was it true? Was he God? He struggled up and sat with his head in his hands. There were things that he wanted to think, if he had known how to think then.

It was late in the afternoon when the end came to his father, quietly, and with no pain. His father knew him, smiled at him, and with perfect gentleness and without shyness, put out his hand. Save in a handshake, he had never taken his hand before since he was a little boy. But now they took each other’s hands naturally, as if a veil had gone. Afterward, the Inger wondered why he had not kissed him. He had not thought of that.

Before he called any one, the Inger stood still, looking at his father, and looking out the window to the City. So much had happened. A great deal of what had happened he understood, but there was much more that seemed to be pressing on him to be made clear. He had a strong sense of being some one else, of standing outside and watching. What great change was this that had come to his father and to him?

By dark they had taken his father away. The Inger went with him and did what he could. His father lay in an undertaker’s chapel. From the street the Inger stared at the chapel. It looked so strangely like the other buildings.

He took back to his room some poor belongings of his father’s, and when he saw the little room, and the empty unmade bed, he was shaken by a draining sense of loneliness—the first loneliness that he had ever known. Then he let his thought go where all day it had longed to go. He wanted Lory Moor.

He let himself go round by the little house of the Folts’s. It was quite dark, save for that watching light in the kitchen window. He waited on the other side of the street for a long time. No one came. There seemed to be no one in the neighborhood. A little dog came by, looked up at him, and stood wagging a ragged tail. The Inger stooped, then squatted beside the dog, and patted his head.