The Hand — A Reader’s Guide

She looked around, saw a milk pail, put it open end down over the hand and carried two large rocks from the garden border to put on top to secure it. She didn't want it to be gone when she brought Mac back to see it.

She heard her ring on the telephone--rather early for Mrs. Swearingen or Mrs. Abbey wasn't it?--but ignored it. There was something else she had to do and do quickly. For the first time in months she felt thankful for Mac's presence. Surely he would know what to do. Though it was cold, she was unmindful of the fact that she did not wear a coat as she hurried to the barn; she was thinking instead that perhaps she should have answered the phone in case it might have been someone other than her women friends, possibly something in connection with the severed hand. She shuddered as she remembered how it had looked.

Alice found Mac in the loft. He had a forkful of hay over the opening when he saw her below. He stopped, narrowed his eyes before he slowly brought the hay back to the loft floor and leaned on the pitchfork.

"Dobie's found something," she said and wished her voice hadn't quavered so.

Mac spat a blob of tobacco on the floor above her. "He's a no-good dog," he said. "Scares the pigs. Always sneakin' around. Ought to be rid of him. Should have got 'round to it before this. What did he find?"

"A hand." She swallowed ... and shivered.

"A hand. A human hand." She suddenly took pride in the fact that she was telling him something he didn't know and that he was interested. "I don't know where he got it."

Mac put down the fork and lowered his burly frame over the edge of the opening and came down the ladder without a word. He followed her up to the house and she was thankful Dobie was nowhere around. When he kicked over the pail she was gratified to hear his sharp intake of breath.

"By God!" he said, staring down at it. Then he flicked it over with his boot. "By God!" he said again. Alice had never seen him so agitated.

He turned to her, his eyes narrower than she had ever seen them. "You take a good look at it?"

She nodded, looked down at the way the fingers were bent upward as if the hand were holding an invisible ball. She heard Mac spit, looked at him running his fingers along his stubbled jaw.

"It ain't human," he said. "Anybody with any sense could see that. It's got six fingers."

Just then the phone rang again. It seemed to come from a long way off and Alice hadn't consciously noticed it until her husband said. "Ain't you goin' to answer the phone?" And then she went to the door, dazed and wondering. She turned before she went in.

"What are you going to do with it?" she asked.

"You just go in and gab with those women folks," he said. "I'll take care of it."

"Shouldn't we call the sheriff?"

His eyes came up level with hers. "We ain't goin' to call nobody. I don't want no trouble. And don't you go talkin' about it with _them_ either."

The phone was Mrs. Swearingen who told her that she had been trying to get her for the last half hour ever since she heard about that ship that crashed and wasn't it awful and that a person wasn't safe in his bed asleep any more with these planes flying around and crashing--and so far from an airport, too. Mrs. Swearingen was surprised that Alice had noticed no smoke and didn't she know the wreck was closer to the McNearby place than it was to the Swearingens?

"It's right south of your lower forty on the old Carnahan land, Alice. I'd figure it at about a mile from your place. Lots of people down there."

And then there was the call from Mrs. Abbey who told her she'd come from the crash site and wasn't it a peculiar plane with those funny windows and that once-broken-one somebody had patched up from the inside.

"The sheriff won't let anybody go near it," Mrs. Abbey said. "He says it's a space ship and the army ought to have a look at it first. But I saw him trying to find where to get in. Except for that broken window and that crumpled nose it don't look too bad off. Big clouds of smoke were shooting out the tail when I first got there but it's not smoking any more. Really, you ought to go down and see it, Alice."