Ellery Queen's Double Dozen, page 5
“I know. Don’t be blaming yourself, Gary. You couldn’t make your Pa do nothing he didn’t have a mind to.”
“Some day I’ll be big enough.”
The boy’s thin body was tense as a newly stretched wire fence, his lips taut, his dark eyes staring past her.
Marcy touched his cheek. “How was the Fair? Don’t matter I wasn’t there. I do truly hope you had a fine time. All the things to see. . .Did Kathy and Danny get to ride the merry-go-round all they wanted? Did you all have candy apples and spun sugar candy on a stick and ride the Ferris wheel and see the clowns and the whole building full of fruit and vegetables in baskets and the cattle all fixed up pretty and fancy? Did you get to see all that?”
The boy’s young face twisted as he fought against crying. His worried eyes searched her shadowed face. “Pa said we weren’t to tell you, said he’d skin us if we did. But I never did lie to you, Ma.”
“No, son.” Marcy felt a sudden cold fear.
“Pa said to tell you we went to the Fair, all of us. But we didn’t. He gave Kathy a dollar and she and Danny went. They were waiting right at the gate when we got back Kathy was crying but she was all right.”
“Where did you go, Gary?”
“I don’t know—some place on the west side of town. Pa said it was time I started living like a man. He didn’t want any sissy sons, he said. We went to a place, sort of in back of a store, I guess. Anyway, it was a big room and a lot of men were there and some women, too. There was a jukebox and it was kind of dark and funny-smelling. Everybody seemed to be having a real good time. They danced some and talked loud and laughed a lot. Everybody liked Pa and he took me around and told everybody I was his son. They were real friendly. Pa started playing cards with some fellows. One of the ladies brought me some cookies and a sandwich and something to drink—soda pop, it was. It was sort of smoky in there and I got to feeling sick and after a while I went to sleep. Then Pa woke me up and said it was time to go home.”
Marcy was so quiet and motionless that the boy finally touched her face. “Ma, please don’t be mad at me.”
“I love you,” said Marcy Bayliss fiercely. “I love you and Kathy and Danny so much I can’t find words enough to tell you how much. You know that, Gary?”
“Sure, Ma.”
“Then don’t you worry any more. Everything’s going to be all right.” She rose and picked up the lamp. “Go to sleep,” she whispered, and stroked his tangled dark hair.
The boy’s tense body relaxed. His face lighted with a brief smile. He turned on his side and his eyes closed heavily. Marcy smoothed the quilt over him.
Then, moving as silently as the monstrous black shadow that followed her along the rough board walls, she went into the kitchen. Her strong hand closed on the bone handle of a kitchen knife. The long blade was worn to a thin point, razor sharp, gleaming in the yellow lamplight. She carried the lamp in her left hand, the knife in her right. She brushed aside the curtain and entered the bedroom.
Joe lay on his back, one arm stretched out across her pillow. His naked chest, thickly matted with black hair, rose and fell with his breathing. He looked at her and his eyes shone, catlike, in the lamp’s dim glow. “Come on, Marcy;” he said. “Hurry up, ol’ woman.”
She set the lamp on the packing case that served as a table beside the bed. She leaned over him and with both hands and all her strength she drove the knife into his chest clear to the handle.
He made a hoarse sound and struggled to sit up. His fingers fumbled with the knife. He stared at her with horrified unbelief. He coughed and blood gushed down his heaving body. Then he fell back on the bed.
Marcy turned down the lamp wick and blew out the flame. The small room Hooded with the black and silver of the moon light. The woman leaned against the bed frame. Now that it was done she was trembling and sick, but she was glad. The children were hers—she had borne them, she had raised them. . .
Slowly her strength came back to her and her hands were steady as she changed to her work clothes. She went out to the toolshed in the back yard and got a shovel. She dug a grave for Joe beneath a young Black Twig apple tree in the orchard. The ground was hard and the grave deep so that the night was almost over when she had finished.
She wrapped the body in the stained bedclothing and dragged it out through the house, across the back porch, and across the yard to the grave. When she had tumbled it in, she stood gasping for breath. Joe was a big man and heavy. The moon, low in the west, gave an eerie unearthly look to the dark bulk of the familiar mountain ridges, and its pale light made weblike shadows of the tree branches in the lifeless grass. Only the brightest of the stars blazed with chill, diamond brilliance in the black velvet sky. It seemed a time set aside for death.
Marcy shivered. She hurried back into the house and brought out the clothes Joe had worn. Sitting on the mound of fresh earth, she searched his pockets—some of her $20 might be left. She found the keys to his red Ford truck and a roll of bills. She counted the money—nearly $zoo! No wonder he had come home in such a good humor—the card game had been lucky for him.
Marcy dropped Joe’s clothes into the grave and then quickly filled it in. She smoothed the ground and spread the extra dirt into the freshly disked orchard rows. She cleaned the shovel and put it away and washed her face and hands in the springs icy overflow.
The eastern sky was growing light with the coming of the sun when Marcy Bayliss finally sat on her front-porch step. A rooster crowed in the hen house and a coyote sang in the dark canyon below the house.
Marcy smiled. The eastern sky faded into gold and palest blue. It was a new day—a fine new day to go to the County Fair.
II: Cross My Heart. . .
Louise lay flat on her stomach on the lumpy bed under the poplar tree in the back yard of her home. She lay with her knees bent and her calloused bare feet twined and twisted with a snaky life of their own as she looked at the bright-colored pictures in an old Montgomery Ward catalogue. She removed one grimy hand from her chin as she turned a page. Behind her thick-lensed, black-rimmed glasses her dark eyes were glassy with longing. She leaned on her elbow and stabbed at the pages with a grimy forefinger.
“I wish I had that,” she said. “And that—and that—and that—”
Above her head the heart-shaped poplar leaves hung limp and dark, unstirring in the morning’s oppressively humid heat. Her mother’s White Leghorns car-r-rked lazily as they dusted themselves in the powdery dirt of the chicken pen. Bees hummed sluggishly in the alfalfa patch beyond the unkempt yard. Over the flat fields the sun Hung a pale, wavering haze of moisture drawn from the irrigation ditches and the soaked earth. The hot air smelled of steaming plant growth and stagnant water.
Louise turned on her back. Her eyes stared sightlessly up into the inert dark leaves. She felt herself sinking delightfully into her own inner world where she seemed to hang suspended in space, cushioned in the softest down, caressed tenderly by unseen hands.
She closed her eyes and waited breathlessly. Silken billows lifted her and she saw herself standing on a stage in front of a huge audience. The people in the audience were indistinct mouths smiling at her and shining eyes looking at her with love. She stood apart and saw herself and she was beautiful with a skin like ivory satin and a little red mouth and great dark eyes. And her dress felt light as a moonbeam and was of palest rose chiffon.
There were jewels in her ears and around her throat. She stretched out her arms to the people, a hush fell on the audience, a crescendo of violins played—and she sang. Her voice was clear and true and incredibly sweet. She sang and sang and when she had finished the audience stood as one and shouted and cried and rained flowers on her—all but two who crouched, black as vultures, in the wings of the vast stage.
Louise tried to hold onto the wonderful dream but the two evil figures tore her away from all the beauty and warm delight. Their faces grew and swelled until they were close, staring at her, pointing their long clawlike fingers. . .The faces belonged to Miss Miles and Miss Henderson.
Louise had been in the cloakroom that last week of school in June. The children were supposed to play outside during recess, so she had stepped back into a corner behind an old coat when she heard the thump of sensible heels on the board floor. Then they had come into the room, Miss Miles and Miss Henderson, who taught Louise’s sixth-grade classes.
Miss Miles said to Miss Henderson, “What do you think of that Carter girl?” Her voice sounded funny as if she were speaking about something unclean.
Miss Henderson said, “I never saw such a thoroughly unattractive child.” Her voice had the same sound as Miss Miles’s voice.
“I know it,” said Miss Miles. “I can’t bear to have her close to me. I know I shouldn’t feel that way, but she makes my skin absolutely crawl!”
“I wonder,” began Miss Henderson thoughtfully. “It’s an odd thing—”
She and Miss Miles talked some more, but they began to use big words.
The rest of the week Louise had kept as far away from her teachers as she could. But in her mind, with dreadful relish, she had destroyed them a hundred times.
Now, as she lay quietly on her back under the old poplar tree, she ran them down with her powerful red sports car. It wasn’t as gruesome as some of her other methods of destruction, but it had its juicy points. The two teachers were walking down a steep banked road in a dark forest—Miss Miles, round and fat, Miss Henderson, thin and flat. They heard her coming—the deadly whirr of the powerful engine, the vengeful scream of the racing tires on the rough pavement. They looked back over their shoulders. Their eyes grew wide. They looked funny—Miss Miles, her round face like a pale sugar cookie with raisin eyes, and Miss Henderson, her long face like a slab of colorless cheese with a carrot nose. They ran. They screamed. They clawed at the steep bank, but it didn’t do them one bit of good. Louise ran over them and over them and over them until they looked like printed linoleum rugs, one round and one long and narrow.
“Louise! Louise!”
The girl heard the voice faintly.
“Louise, you lazy good-for-nothin’! If I have to yell once more, I’ll come over there an’ swat you good!”
The dream burst into a thousand crimson bubbles that floated into the dark forest and vanished.
The girl opened her eyes and saw the leaves of the poplar tree and the shattered glass sparkles of the sun. She moved her head. “What d’ya want?”
Her mother stood on the back porch of the old frame house. She was a tall graying woman in a faded housedress. She was all angles and flat unyielding planes. A sour and bitter defeat shone in her tired eyes and in the bitter harshness of her mouth. “Rosellen’s come over to play,” she said. “And you play nice with her or I’ll whale the livin’ tar out of you.”
“Like fun you will,” the girl said under her breath. Aloud she said, “Sure, Ma.”
The woman went back into the house slamming the door behind her. The girl lay quietly, her thin body flat and shapeless on the worn quilt that covered the bed. She became aware of the sounds and the heat of the day. In the mesh-fenced pen a hen sang proudly of a newly laid egg. Across the fields drifted the somnolent purr of a moving machine and the irritating monotonous chir-r-r of cicadas in the dry grass.
Around the corner of the house a small figure appeared picking its way along the overgrown path. Rosellen was a tiny, exquisitely fashioned child with vacant, round blue eyes and curly blonde hair. Louise despised her for many reasons, and her dislike was mixed with a hopeless envy. For her part, Rosellen’s somewhat simple mind couldn’t conceive that in all the world there was a person who did not like and admire her. She lived in a large, beautifully kept house close to the road and her father was the Carters’ landlord. She seldom came to see Louise and when she did, the older girl’s sullen dislike was so apparent that Rosellen went home puzzled and unhappy—which alarmed Louise’s parents so much that they threatened her with dire punishment if she didn’t behave more civilly.
Louise watched her small visitor approach with coldly impassive eyes. Rosellen was wearing a blue-and-white checked pinafore. Her hair was slicked into two braids with blue ribbons and she wore tiny white sandals. She carried a long Hat box.
“Hello,” Rosellen said, looking down at Louise with a testy superiority.
“Hello,” said Louise flatly.
The blonde child fidgeted. “Mama said I was to go play and leave her alone. Annie’s gone and Laura’s gone and Sally went to the coast with her mama, so I came over here. Do you want to play paper dolls? I brought mine.”
“They stink, stink, stink!”
The round blue eyes stared. The childish red lips pouted. “They don’t either! If you don’t play nice with me I’ll tell your mama on you.”
Rosellen leaned forward and set the flat box on the bed. She tugged open the lid. As she did so, Louise saw a heavy gold chain around her visitor’s neck and a heavy something that swung below it.
“Whatcha got on the chain?”
The blue eyes widened self-consciously. A small dimpled hand touched the lumped pinafore. “That’s a secret,” said Rosellen mysteriously. “I got it out of Mama’s jewel box.” Defensively she added, “Mama never told me I couldn’t wear it.”
“Lemme see it.”
The blue eyes regarded Louise with a cool importance. “You got to promise you won’t tell anybody.”
“I promise, lemme see it.”
“Mama’d be awful mad if she knew.”
“Thought you said she let you wear it.”
“N-no-she let me look at it though. Daddy doesn’t even know she’s got it. She said he’d be mad and make her send it back.”
“I bet! You’re making up stories, Rosellen. It’s some ole dime store junk somebody gave you.”
“It is not!” The blonde child flushed. “A nice man my mama used to know sent it to her from South America.”
“Quit making up stories. Ole brass chain—turn your ole neck all green!”
Rosellen pulled the heavy chain out from the front of her pinafore. “There, see! It’s not any ole junk! It’s a real ruby! Mama said so!”
The jewel at the end of the chain was the most beautiful thing Louise had ever seen. It was a deep-red stone as large as a sparrow’s egg, surrounded by clear brilliants and smaller red stones, all intricately wrapped in fine gold wire.
“Oh-h—h-!” Louise sat up straight. Her eyes glowed. Never in all her life had she seen anything so beautiful or envisioned anything so desirable, even in her most precious dreams. The red gem glowed at her like a beckoning ember.
Rosellen smiled proudly. “It’s terribly valuable,” she said with insufferable self-importance. “It’s a real, real gen-u-wine ruby. I bet you never saw one before, did you?”
“I bet it’s nothing but glass,” Louise said automatically.
She put out her hand to touch the wonderful red stone.
Rosellen jerked away from her. “You’ll get it all dirty put ting your fingers on it.”
“I just want to see it a minute.”
The blonde little girl dropped the jewel down the front of the dress. “If you aren’t going to play with me, I’m going home.”
Louise caught her arm. “Don’t leave yet,” she said. “Let me just put it on a minute. Then I’ll play anything you like.”
“I’ve got to go home,” said Rosellen uneasily.
“No, you don’t. Just let me wear it a little while. I’ll play dolls with you an’ I’ll be real nice.”
“Give it right back?”
“I promise.”
“Well—all right. You’ve got to take it off when I say so. You promised.”
The chain was unsnapped from the slender white neck and clasped around the bony dark one. The gem seemed to burn Louise’s skin as she slid it down inside the open collar of her old shirt. It settled and seemed to be at home between the swelling bumps of breasts.
She held her hand over it and through the thin fabric of her shirt and the blood-red web of her fingers it seemed to glow with a marvelous and sinister light. Her thoughts folded in on it. It would be her lucky talisman, her protector, her friend. Something really truly would happen to old Miss Miles and old Miss Henderson—something awful, much worse than she could ever imagine. She felt her whole being transformed and made beautiful by the miraculous presence of the jewel against her body.
Rosellen laid her paper dolls out on the bed. She hummed to herself with housewifely zeal. “You can have Maria for your mama,” she said brightly, “and Kathy and Dora for your children. I’ll take Debbie for my mama and Alice and Susan for my little girls.”
She spread the brightly colored dolls and sorted out a pile of elegant paper clothing for each one.
Louise sat silently, her hand clutching the stone beneath her shirt, her thin, ugly face translucent with an inner light.
Rosellen said importantly, “I’m all ready, Louise. You can come visit my house first.” She stared doubtfully at the darkly silent girl. “Louise, come on. You said you’d play. You promised.” She shook Louise’s arm insistently. “If you don’t play I’m going home. Give me my mama’s necklace!”
Louise sat silent and immovable.
Rosellen’s blue eyes filled with angry tears. “I’m going to tell your mama you won’t play with me. You’ll git it! You’ll see!”
She started toward the house.
Louise leaped from the bed and caught her by the shoulder. She dug her wiry fingers into the soft flesh. “You tell my mama anything, I’ll tell your mama you stole her necklace!”
Rosellen began to wail.
“Shut up! Mama’ll hear you!”
The children returned to the bed.
“You said you’d play with me,” Rosellen sobbed. “You promised!”
“I didn’t say where I’d play, did I?” Louise asked. Behind her thick glasses her eyes gleamed redly. “Let’s take the dolls an’ go up to the ditch. I’ve got a nice playhouse up there, all cut out of the weeds. Just like a real house. It’s got rooms an’ a little table an’ chairs.”
