Heart's Kindred

by Zona Gale

Then he got out of the place, where sharp music was beginning and the ten or twelve women were dancing among the tables, and went down the street, thronged now with the disappointed guests, intent on forcing the ruined evening to some wild festivity. When they called to him to join them, he hardly heard. He went straight through the town and shook it from him and met the desert, and took his own trail.

The night was now one of soft, thick blackness, on which the near stars pressed. The air had a sharp chill—as if it bore no essence of its own but hung empty of warmth when the daylight was drained from it. The stillness was insistent. In a place of water, left from the rains, and still deep enough to run in ripples over the sedge, frogs were in chorus.

There was a sentinel pepper tree on the edge of the town and here a mocking-bird sang out, once, and was still. These left behind, and the saw and crack and beat of the music dying, the Inger faced the dark, gave himself to the exultation which flowed in him, mounted with it to a new place.

The liquor which he had drunk was in his veins, and to this the part of him which understood all the rest of him credited his swimming delight. But separate from this, as his breath was separate, there came and went like a pulse, something else which he could not possibly have defined, born in him in the street, when he had heard Jem Moor’s bad news.

He threw out his arms and ran, staggering. What was there that he must do? Here he was, ready for it. What was there that he must do? Then he remembered. The War! He would have that. That was what he could do.

He stood still on the desert, and imagined himself one of thousands on the plain. What if he were with them there in the darkness? What if the rise of the sand were the edge of the opposite trenches, with men breathing behind them, waiting? With a drunken laugh, he pulled his revolver, and fired and shouted. Why, he could plough his way through anything. He should not go down—not he! But he should be fighting like this in the field of civilized men, and not taking his adventures piecemeal, in a back lot of the world, with a skulking sheriff or two and Bunchy for adversary. To-morrow! He would go to-morrow, and find what his life could give him.

But this other thing that was pulsing in him ... the girl! What about her? Was he not to find her, was he not to have her? He closed his eyes and swam in the thought of her. War and the woman—suddenly he was aflame with them both.

When he went into the wood, he went singing. He himself was the centre of the night and of his universe. The wood, Whiteface, his journey, the war, lay ready to his hand as accessory and secondary to his consciousness. He felt his own life, and other life was its background. He made a long crying guttural noise, like an animal. He shook his great body and crashed through the undergrowth, the young saplings stinging his cheeks. To-morrow—he would be off to-morrow....

He emerged upon the little space which was his home. The fire had fallen and was a red glow, and a watching eye. Rolled in his blanket beside it lay his father, deeply breathing. In a moment the Inger became another being. He stood tense, stepped softly, entered quietly the open door of his hut.