Cropper's Cabin

by Jim Thompson

  I pounded on them and she—and Miss Trumbull came out.

  “Why, what in the—Oh, my goodness!” she said. “Oh, heavens to Betsy!”

  And I passed out again.

  13

  When I came to I was sitting at the kitchen table, and she was trying to pour coffee down me. I choked and coughed, and she pulled the cup away. Then she put it back to my mouth again, and I swallowed it down without stopping.

  “Well!” she said. “That’s better, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  “Of all the foolish—Well! I won’t say anything now! Can you walk?”

  “I—think so,” I said.

  “Let me help you. Now, lean on me, you stubborn thing! There. This way, now. I’ve got a nice hot bath all ready for you.”

  We went up the stairs with her arm around me, and she guided me into the bathroom. She pushed me down on a stool, steadying me until she was sure I wouldn’t topple off.

  “Feeling any stronger?” she said. “Think you can undress yourself?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, though I wasn’t feeling too strong. “Sure, I can.”

  “Do it then. The quicker you’re in that tub the better. I’ll go get you a…”

  She went out, leaving the door open. She came back carrying a nightgown, and I hadn’t taken off but one shoe.

  “I think this will fit you,” she said, hanging the gown over a hook. “It belonged to my father, God rest his soul, but—Why aren’t you out of those clothes!”

  “Well, I—I thought I’d better wait,” I said.

  “But… Oh, my goodness!” she said. “Oh, heavens to Betsy!” And she hurried out, slamming the door.

  I undressed and got into the tub; and I’d never been in a real bathtub before but I did it easy as pie. I lay back in the water, soaking, letting the warmth sink into me. And I guess there aren’t many things nicer than getting warm after you’ve been cold a long time.

  I scooted down until the water came clear up to my chin. I closed my eyes, and—

  And there was a banging at the door.

  “Thomas! Thomas Carver! Have you gone to sleep in there?”

  “No, ma’am,” I said. “I’m getting right out, Miss Trumbull.”

  “Well, shake a leg. And be sure to dry good before you put on that nightgown. You don’t want pneumonia, do you?”

  “No, ma’am,” I said.

  “Humph!” she said. “Probably do. Wouldn’t surprise me a bit.”

  She was waiting outside the door when I came out. She took me into a room adjoining the bath, jerked down the covers of a big four-poster and motioned. I climbed into it.

  “Now, leave those covers down,” she said, when I started to pull them up. “I’m going to rub your chest and—No, you’d better take these pills first.”

  I took the pills, quinine they tasted like, and she began rubbing my chest with some strong smelly stuff. She finished rubbing, spread a thick flannel cloth over it and buttoned the neck of the gown.

  “There, that’ll fix you,” she said. “Now, can you eat anything?”

  “Almost anything,” I said.

  “How about some nice roast beef?”

  “Well, I—I reckon that’d be fine,” I said.

  She frowned a little. “You don’t like roast beef?”

  And I didn’t seem too feverish any more, but I could feel my face turning red. “I don’t hardly know,” I said. “I never ate any.”

  She hurried out of the room and down the stairs, and I heard her slamming things around in the kitchen. I lay back on the pillows, feeling warm and good in spite of what I had on my mind. Everything seemed so clean and peaceful, lying there listening to her; humming, singing a few words now and then:

  In the sweet bye and bye,

  Hmmm-hmm-hmm,

  We will meet on that beautiful shore.

  Hmmm-hmm-hmm.

  In the sweet…

  She came back up the stairs, walking slow, and when she came into my room I saw why. She was carrying a tray that must have been five feet around, and it was so loaded with food you couldn’t see between the dishes. There was a big plate of roast beef—and I knew I’d like it fine—and brown potatoes and creamed corn and greens and a big piece of apple pie and coffee and—

  I pushed myself up in bed and started reaching for the tray before I remembered my manners.

  She placed it in my lap and stood back, her eyeglasses twinkling and sparkling in the light.

  “How do you feel, Thomas?”

  “Fine,” I said. And I picked up a fork and laid it down again. “Still pretty weak, but—”

  “You’ll be stronger after you eat. Now, you’re welcome here, you understand that. I know you, and I know you couldn’t have done that terrible thing; and I don’t need you to tell me you didn’t. But if you think you would feel like talking tonight…”

  “I’ll feel like it,” I said. “I can talk right now. Anything you want to know.”

  “No. You eat while your food is hot. At any rate, I want you to talk to Mr. Redbird as well as me. I want to have him come over.”

  “Oh,” I said, and I frowned. “Well, I—I don’t know about that, Miss Trumbull.”

  “Thomas. Don’t you know who your friends are, by now?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I just don’t see much point to it. All I want to do is get myself pulled together, so that I can…”

  “No, sir!” she said. “No, sir-ee, that is not all you want to do. Thus far you’re not guilty of anything but a bit of rash conduct. Foolishness. The…”

  “That’s not the way it looks, though. It looks like I’m guilty as all-getout and I can’t prove I’m not.”

  “Oh, yes, you can,” she said firmly. “But you’ve got to face up to the situation. You can’t accomplish anything by running. Now, I want to ask Mr. Redbird over, Thomas. He’ll know more about what to do than I will.”

  “Well,” I said, “if that’s what you want, I reckon that’s what you’ll do.”

  “Thomas…” She shook her head sadly.

  And I figured I must seem pretty curt and ungrateful.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Trumbull,” I said. “I’d like to talk to Mr. Redbird. I really would.”

  “Fine!” she said. “Splendid. I’ll just give him a ring, and—what’s the matter?”

  “The telephone,” I said. “I imagine you’re on a party line, and…”

  “Oh…” She hesitated. “Well, of course, I wouldn’t need to say why I wanted to see him, but—Perhaps you’re right. I’ll just run over to his house. It’ll only take a few minutes.”

  “I sure hate to put you out,” I said.

  “Fiddlesticks!” she said. “Stop saying sure all the time. Stop saying reckon. Haven’t I taught you anything at all? Eat your dinner!”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I grinned, and I got busy.

  I heard the front door close as she left, and that beef was sure—certainly good, but I stopped chewing for a minute. I had a notion that I was doing the wrong thing by letting her get Mr. Redbird. But it was just a notion—not even a real Grade-A hunch; and after what I’d been through, I was apt to be jumpy without any reason. So I shrugged it off and went back to eating.

  I was just finishing up about a half-hour later, when I heard them coming up the front steps and across the porch. The door opened and closed, and she called up the stairs:

  “Thomas? Everything all right?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I called back. “I su—certainly am.”

  “I’ll get more coffee for all of us,” she said. “You go right on up, Mr. Redbird.”

  He came up, and I felt a little funny, embarrassed; and, of course, I didn’t need to. He winked at me, pushing me back on the pillows when I started to get up. He laid a hand on my forehead, puffing his pipe thoughtfully, his eyes warm and friendly.

  “Think you might live?” He smiled, and sat down.

  “Yes, sir. I hope so,” I said.

>   “Just don’t worry,” he said. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

  Miss Trumbull came in. She set the coffee tray down on a stand, lifted the other one onto the dresser and poured coffee all around.

  “Now,” she said, seating herself in a straight chair and nodding to me. “Now, Thomas!”

  I started talking.

  I told them everything there was to tell. The only things I kind of glided over was how much Donna had meant to me and the messy way Mary had acted. But I could see that they understood without having all the details.

  I finished talking. Miss Trumbull looked at Mr. Redbird.

  He sat frowning a little, tapping the stem of his pipe against his teeth.

  “You think, then,” he said, at last, “that your father did it?”

  “I’m sure he did,” I said.

  “Just to put you in a bad light? I don’t know, Tom; the risk he’d run and all. It seems like a rather extreme measure to me.”

  “I’d call it a little more than putting me in a bad light,” I said, trying not to make it sound too short. “He was killing me—the same as killing me. And Mary would have told him about Donna, and he was fixing me there, too. Just wiping me out wasn’t enough for him. He wanted to make her hate…”

  “Mmm, yes, I suppose.” He didn’t seem very convinced. “Can you think of any other reason why he would have killed Mr. Ontime?”

  “Well,” I said, “there’s the oil. He may have thought that with Mr. Ontime out of the way, Donna would lease their land for drilling and he could lease his.”

  “I’ll just bet that was it!” said Miss Trumbull.

  But Mr. Redbird shook his head.

  “I’m afraid not. There’s a basic contradiction there. If he’d simply killed Matthew Ontime, yes. But to kill him and frame Tom for the murder, that doesn’t add up. He’d know that Donna would hardly be inclined to accommodate the father of the man who had killed her father.”

  “Well…” Miss Trumbull hesitated.

  “Well,” I said, “I know I didn’t do it.”

  “Now, Tom,” Mr. Redbird smiled, “keep your nightshirt on. Of course,” he added; “we mustn’t overlook the big thing, your father’s hatred for Mr. Ontime. In itself, it would hardly be sufficient to move him—to prompt him to take such a terrible risk—but when you couple that hatred with his hatred for you…”

  “And he felt like he didn’t have anything to lose,” I pointed out. “All that was left to him was getting even with me and Mr. Ontime.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, that’s true. But still…”

  He paused and frowned down into the bowl of his pipe.

  “Let me ask you this,” he said. “Is there a chance that your father went up to the plantation to argue with Mr. Ontime?”

  “No,” I said, “he wouldn’t have done that. He was too stiff-necked. Anyhow he’d have known it wouldn’t get him a thing—unless it was what I got.”

  “I’ll tell you why I ask, Tom. You see—well,” he frowned troubledly, “it all seems very clear-cut in a way. Your father hated you and Ontime. He had your knife, and he had Mary to alibi for him. So he committed the murder; q.e.d. With premeditation…”

  “You’re doggone right he did,” I said.

  “Perhaps. It seems that he must have. But the premeditation—and it’s there axiomatically—bothers me. Mr. Ontime worked long hours, but it would be extremely unusual for him or any of his employees to be out and around the place as late as midnight. Your father would know that. He’d know that there wouldn’t be one chance in ten thousand of catching him outside the house, and he certainly wouldn’t dare go inside. So why…?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, maybe he wasn’t being too logical. He was…”

  “I understand. He wanted revenge, and he wasn’t much concerned with the cost. And since you planned on leaving, he had to commit the murder last night if he was going to do it at all.… Yes, it could have been that way. He wasn’t sure he’d find Mr. Ontime outside the house, but the possibility existed, and, unfortunately, materialized. But”—he shook his head again—“it still doesn’t quite work out. I can’t quite get over the idea that the murder was the result of a quarrel; that it wasn’t premeditated.”

  “But you just said…”

  “Without regard to the murder instrument, Tom. That’s difficult to account for on any basis. Matthew Ontime was a strong, vigorous man. With so many other truly deadly weapons available, why should your father choose a pocketknife to kill him?”

  “Because he had to. He had to use my knife in order to pin the murder on me.”

  “But the odds were all against his being able to kill with it. The chances were that Matthew Ontime would take it away from him before he got in one blow.”

  “Pa would take that chance,” I said. “If he was mad enough, he just wouldn’t care what happened.”

  “Yes, but…”

  Miss Trumbull cleared her throat. “Our job, as I see it, is simply to establish Thomas’ innocence. What’s so difficult about it? This—this Mary woman has it in for Thomas, and she’s completely dominated by his father. She’s let him do her talking for her, and the sheriff hasn’t had any better sense than to let him. What needs to be done, is to get her off by herself. Throw a good scare into her. I’ll bet she’d change her story fast. She’d forget all about this neat little alibi which places Carver innocently in bed at the time of the murder.”

  “But that still wouldn’t prove that he did it.”

  “We don’t need to prove it. It would prove that he and she were both liars, that their testimony as to Thomas’ probable whereabouts was inspired by pure malice. That’s all we need to prove. The rest is up to the sheriff.”

  Mr. Redbird hesitated. “Well,” he admitted, “it would certainly help to break down Mary’s story.”

  “Just help?” I said. “I can’t see why it wouldn’t do the whole job. I mean, it’s like Miss Trumbull says. The rest is up to the sheriff.”

  He looked down at the carpet, not saying anything. I waited and then it came to me: what he was thinking and didn’t want to say.

  “I see,” I said. “It was my knife and I can’t prove that I lost it and—and I’ve acted pretty hot-headed. I slipped up to the plantation before after they’d all gone to bed. It looks like I’d be a lot more likely to go about a killing without figuring out the details than Pa would.”

  “That’s about the size of it,” he said soberly. “Now, if your father and Mary would swear that you weren’t—”

  “It wouldn’t do any good, now.”

  “Well, it certainly wouldn’t be as effective as if they’d done it in the first place. But…”

  “Just a moment.” Miss Trumbull banged her coffee cup into her saucer. “You two keep going off on tangents. Let’s get back to Thomas’ father. Naturally, he’s not going to do anything to assist the son he tried to incriminate, and there’s no use discussing it. What we need to do is to prove that his alibi is false. When we do that we’ll prove a great deal more than the fact of his lying. Don’t you see? Why else, unless he committed the murder, would he need an alibi?”

  A big smile began spreading over Mr. Redbird’s face. He slapped his knee suddenly. “Why, of course,” he said, laughing. “That’s my devious Indian mind for you; I can’t see the pit for the snakes. In all likelihood, Tom’s father told Mary he’d committed the murder. He’d want her to be prepared. Of course, her testimony would only be hearsay, and we’re still faced with the matter of the…”

  “We are not!” said Miss Trumbull firmly. “The sheriff is.”

  “I stand corrected. I’d feel a lot better if—well, I stand corrected,” he smiled.

  “Good,” said Miss Trumbull. “Now, I—more coffee? Well, I guess I won’t either, then—now, I suppose it’s too late tonight to do anything, and we’ll hardly have time before school tomorrow morning. Do you suppose we could get away early in the afternoon, around two, say?”<
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  “We’ll do it, whether we can or not. I’ll talk to Blunden—explain that we have a strong personal interest in the matter and that we want Mary given a thorough grilling.”

  “And we’ll go right along with him to see that he gives it to her,” said Miss Trumbull.

  “Right.” He stood up, brushing the tobacco crumbs from his trousers. “Tom’s going to stay here, is he?”

  “Why, yes, naturally.” Miss Trumbull frowned. “Where else would he stay?”

  “Well, I was just thinking. If it became known that he was here, it…”

  “I don’t need to stay,” I said. “I’m feeling fine now. I can…”

  “No, no,” Mr. Redbird said quickly. “I didn’t mean that you should hide out. My thought was that you might be, uh, doing yourself a disfavor by remaining a fugitive.”

  “But—but I have to,” I said. “What else can I do?”

  “Nothing,” said Miss Trumbull. “You’ll stay right here until this is all cleared up. I’ll keep the shades drawn, and you won’t answer the door or telephone and everything will be perfectly all right.”

  Mr. Redbird hesitated; then his smile came back, and he put out his hand. “Of course, it will be all right,” he said. “After all, it’s only a matter of a day. Less than a day, actually.”

  We shook hands and said goodnight. Miss Trumbull walked downstairs with him to the door, and they stood talking for several minutes before he left. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it sounded like they might be having a kind of argument. Finally the door closed and Miss Trumbull came back upstairs.

  She started stacking the trays and dishes together, then paused and looked at me. “Now what’s the matter?” she said.

  “Are you sure you want me to stay here?”

  “If I didn’t, I’d tell you so,” she said; and I knew she would, too. And I smiled.

  “Anything else?” she said. “Out with it. May as well say it as think it.”

  “I don’t really think it,” I said. “I was just wondering if…”

  “Well, stop wondering. Mr. Redbird’s concern is all for you—not for himself or me. He’s your good friend, Thomas. Remember that, no matter how he acts.”