The Progress of Love

afraid to go to the far end of the cellar, or to the well or toilet after dark. King Billy was a man willing even now to get into a fight, but he was unnerved by the idea of an unknown enemy waiting to pounce. He could not walk from the house to the barn without whirling around to see if there was anybody behind him. When he milked the cows, he turned them around in their stalls so that he could be in a corner where nobody could sneak up on him. Aunt Ivie did the same.
    Aunt Ivie went around the house with a stick, beating on cupboard doors and the tops of chests and trunks and saying, “If you’re in there, you better stay in there until you suffocate to death! You murderer!”
    The murderer would have to be a midget, Viole said, to be hiding in any of those places.
    Dawn Rose and Bonnie Hope were staying home from school, although it was the time of year when they should have been preparing to write the entrance examinations. They were afraid to get undressed at night, and their clothes were all wrinkled and sour-smelling.
    Meals were not being cooked. But the neighbors brought food. There seemed to be always some visitor sitting at the kitchen table, a neighbor, or even someone not well known to the family who had heard about their trouble and come from a distance. The dishes were being washed in cold water if they were washed at all, and the dog was the only one interested in cleaning up the floor.
    King Billy had been sitting up all night to keep watch. Aunt Ivie barricaded herself behind the bedroom door.
    Violet asked about the letters. They were brought out, spread for her inspection on the oilcloth of the table, as they had been spread before all the neighbors and visitors.
    Here was the letter that had come first, in the regular mail. Then the one that came second, also through the mail. After that the notes were found in different places around the farm.
    On top of a cream can in the stable.
    Tacked to the barn door.
    Wrapped around the handle of the milk pail that King Billy used every day.
    Some argument started up about just which note was found in which place.
    “What about the postmark?” Violet cut in. “Where are the envelopes of the ones that came in the mail?”
    They didn’t know. They didn’t know where the envelopes had got to.
    “I want to see where they were posted from,” said Violet.
    “Don’t make no difference where it was posted from seeing he knows right where to find us,” Aunt Ivie said. “Anyway, he don’t post them now. He sneaks up here after dark and leaves them. Sneaks right around here after dark and leaves them—he knows where to find us.”
    “What about Tigger?” said Violet. “Didn’t he bark?”
    No. But Tigger was getting too old now to be much of a watchdog. And with all the visitors coming and going he had practically given up barking altogether.
    “He likely wouldn’t bark if he seen all the hosts of hell coming in at the gate,” King Billy said.
    The first note told King Billy that he might as well sell off all his cows. He was a marked man. He would never live to cut the hay. He was as good as dead.
    That had sent King Billy to the doctor. He took it that there might be something wrong with him that could be read in his face. But the doctor thumped him and listened to his heart and shone a light in his eyes and charged him two dollars and told him he was sound.
    What a fool ignoramus you were to go to the doctor , the next letter said. You could have saved your two-dollar bill to wipe your dirty old arse. I never told you that you were going to die of any disease. You are going to be killed. That is what is going to happen to you. You aren’t safe no matter how good your health is. I can come in your house at night and slit your throat. I can shoot you from behind a tree. I can sneak up from behind and throw a rope around you and strangle you and you will never even see my face, so what do you think of that?
    So it wasn’t a fortune-teller or somebody who could read the future. It was an enemy, who planned to do the job himself.
I wouldn’t mind killing your ugly wife and your stupid kids while I’m at it .
You ought to be thrown down the toilet hole head first. You bowlegged stupid rotten pig. You ought to have your things cut off with a razor blade. You are a liar, too. All those fights you said you won are a lie .
I could stick a knife in you and catch your blood in a bowl and make a blood pudding. I would feed it to the pigs .
How would