Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  “All the way we are goen this time. We won’t stop at any places, but we will go all the way to Czardis to see Papa. I never see such a place as Czardis.”

  “I recollect the water tower—”

  “Not in your own right, Dan’l. Hit’s by my tellen it you see it in your mind.”

  “And lemonade with ice in it I saw—”

  “That too I seen and told to you.”

  “Then I never seen it at all?”

  “Hit’s me were there, Dan’l. I let you play like, but hit’s me who went to Czardis. Yet I never till this day told half how much I see. There’s sights I never told.”

  They stopped talking, listening for their mother’s stir in the kitchen. But the night stillness was unlifted. Daniel began to shiver again.

  “Hit’s dark,” he said.

  “Hit’s your eyes stuck,” Jim said. “Would you want me to drip a little water on your eyes?”

  “Oh!” cried the young one, pressing his face into his brothers side, “don’t douse me, Jim, no more. The cold aches me.”

  The other soothed him, holding him around the body.

  “You won’t have e’re chill or malarie ache to-day, Dan’l. Hit’s a fair day—”

  “I won’t be cold?”

  “Hit’s a bright day. I hear mournen doves starten a’ready. The sun will bake you warm . . .”

  Uncle Holly might buy us somethen new to eat in Czardis.”

  “What would it be?”

  “Hit ain’t decided yet . . . He hasn’t spoke. Hit might be somethen sweet. Maybe a candy ball fixed onto a rubber string.”

  “A candy ball!” Daniel showed a stir of happiness. “Oh, Jim!” But it was a deceit of the imagination, making his eyes shine wistfully; the grain of his flesh was against it. He settled into stillness by himself. “My stomach would retch it up, Jim . . . I guess I couldn’t eat it.”

  “You might could keep a little down.”

  “No . . . I would bring it home and keep it . . .”

  Their mother when they went to bed had laid a clean pair of pants and a waist for each on the chair. Jim crept out of bed and put on his clothes, then aided his brother on with his. They could not hear any noise in the kitchen, but hickory firewood burning in the kitchen stove worked a smell through the house, and in the forest guinea fowls were sailing down from the trees and poking their way along the half-dark ground toward the kitchen steps, making it known the door was open and that within someone was stirring about at the getting of food.

  Jim led his brother by the hand down the dark way of yellow-pine stairs that went narrowly and without banisters to the rooms below. The young brother went huddling in his clothes, aguelike, knowing warmth was near, hungering for his place by the stove, to sit in peace on the bricks in the floor by the stove’s side and watch the eating, it being his nature to have a sickness against food.

  They came in silence to the kitchen, Jim leading and holding his brother by the hand. The floor was lately strewn with fresh bright sand, and that would sparkle when the daybreak got above the forest, though now it lay dull as hoarfrost and cold to the unshod feet of the brothers. The door to the firebox of the stove was open, and in front of it their mother sat in a chair, speaking low as they entered, muttering under her breath. The two boys went near and stood still, thinking she was blessing the food, there being mush dipped up a steaming in two bowls. And they stood cast down until she lifted her eyes to them and spoke.

  “Your clothes on already,” she said. “You look right neat.” She did not rise, but kept her chair, looking cold and stiff, with the cloth of her black dress sagging between her knees. The sons stood in front of her, and she laid her hand on first one head and then the other and spoke a little about the day, charging them to be sober and of few words, as she had raised them.

  Jim sat on the bench by the table and began to eat, mixing dark molasses sugar through his bowl of mush. But a nausea began in Daniels stomach at sight of the sweet, and he lagged by the stove, gazing at the food as it passed into his brothers mouth.

  Suddenly a shadow filled the back doorway and Holly, their uncle, stood there looking in. He was lean and big and dark from wind and weather, working in the timber as their father had done. He had no wife and children and would roam far off with the timber gangs in the Everglades. This latter year he did not go far, but stayed near them. Their mother stopped and looked at the man, and he looked at her in silence. Then he looked at Jim and Daniel.

  “You’re goen to take them after all?”

  She waited a minute, seeming to get the words straight in her mind before bringing them out, making them say what was set there.

  “He asked to see them. Nobody but God Almighty ought to tell a soul hit can or can’t have.”

  Having delivered her mind, she went out into the yard with the man, and they spoke more words in an undertone, pausing in their speech.

  In the silence of the kitchen Daniel began to speak out and name what thing among his possessions he would take to Czardis to give his father. But the older boy belittled this and that and everything that was called up, saying one thing was of too little consequence for a man, and that another was of no account because it was food. But when the older boy had abolished the idea and silence had regained, he worked back to the thought, coming to it roundabout and making it new and his own, letting it be decided that each of them would take their father a pomegranate from the tree in the yard.

  They went to the kitchen door. The swamp fog had risen suddenly. They saw their mother standing in the lot while their uncle hitched the horse to the wagon. Leaving the steps, Jim climbed to the first crotch of the pomegranate tree. The reddest fruits were on the top branches. He worked his way up higher. The fog was now curling up out of the swamp, making gray mountains and rivers in the air and strange ghost shapes. Landmarks disappeared in the billows, or half seen, they bewildered the sight and an eye could so little mark the known or strange that a befuddlement took hold of the mind, like the visitations sailors beheld in the fogs of Okeechobee. Jim could not find the ground. He seemed to have climbed into the mountains. The light was unnatural and dark, and the pines were blue and dark over the mountains.

  A voice cried out of the fog:

  “Are worms gnawen you that you skin up a pomegranate tree at this hour? Don’t I feed you enough?”

  The boy worked his way down. At the foot of the tree he met his mother. She squatted and put her arm around him, her voice tight and quivering, and he felt tears on her face.

  “We ain’t come to the shame yet of you and Dan’l hunten your food off trees and grass. People seem’ you gnawen on the road will say Jim Cameron’s sons are starved, foragen like cattle of the field.”

  “I were getten the pomegranates for Papa,” said the boy, resigned to his mothers concern. She stood up when he said this, holding him in front of her skirts. In a while she said:

  “I guess we won’t take any, Jim . . . But I’m proud it come to you to take your papa somethen.”

  And after a silence, the boy said:

  “Hit were Dan’l it come to, Mamma.”

  Then she took his hand, not looking down, and in her throat, as if in her bosom, she repeated:

  “Hit were a fine thought and I’m right proud . . . though today we won’t take anything . . .”

  “I guess there’s better pomegranates in Czardis where we are goen—”

  “There’s no better pomegranates in Czardis than right here over your head,” she said grimly. “If pomegranates were needed, we would take him his own . . . You are older’n Dan’l, Jim. When we get to the place we are goen, you won’t know your papa after so long. He will be pale and he won’t be as bright as you recollect. So don’t labor him with questions . . . but speak when it behooves you and let him see you are upright.”

  When the horse was harnessed and all was ready for the departure, the sons were seated on a shallow bed of hay in the back of the wagon and the mother took the driver’s se
at alone. The uncle had argued for having the top up over the seat, but she refused the shelter, remarking that she had always driven under the sky and would do it still today. He gave in silently and got upon the seat of his own wagon, which took the road first, their wagon following. This was strange, and the sons asked:

  “Why don’t we all ride in Uncle Hollys wagon?”

  But their mother made no reply.

  For several miles they traveled in silence through their own part of the woods, meeting no one. The boys whispered a little to themselves, but their mother and their uncle sat without speaking, nor did they turn their heads to look back. At last the narrow road they were following left the woods and came out to the highway, and it was seen that other wagons besides their own were going to Czardis. And as they got farther along, they began to meet many other people going to the town, and the boys asked their mother what day it was. It was Wednesday. And then they asked her why so many wagons were going along the road if it wasn’t Saturday and a market day. When she told them to be quiet, they settled down to watching people go by. Some of them were faces that were strange, and some were neighbors who lived in other parts of the woods. Some who passed them stared in silence, and some went by looking straight to the front. But there were none of them who spoke, for their mother turned her eyes neither right nor left, but drove the horse on like a woman in her sleep. All was silent as the wagons passed, except the squeaking of the wheels and the thud of the horses’ hoofs on the dry, packed sand.

  At the edge of the town the crowds increased, and their wagon got lost in the press of people. All were moving in one direction.

  Finally they were going along by a high brick wall on top of which ran a barbed-wire fence. Farther along the way in the middle of the wall was a tall, stone building with many people in front. There were trees along the outside of the wall, and in the branches of one of the trees Daniel saw a man. He was looking over the brick wall down into the courtyard. All the wagons were stopping here and hitching through the grove in front of the building. But their Uncle Holly’s wagon and their own drove on, making way slowly as through a crowd at a fair, for under the trees knots of men were gathered, talking in undertone. Daniel pulled at his mother’s skirts and whispered:

  “What made that man climb up that tree?”

  Again she told him to be quiet.

  “We’re not to talk today,” said Jim. “Papa is sick and we’re not to make him worse.” But his high, thin voice made his mother turn cold. She looked back and saw he had grown pale and still, staring at the iron-barred windows of the building. When he caught her gaze, his chin began to quiver, and she turned back front to dodge the knowledge in his eyes.

  For the two wagons had stopped now and the uncle gotten down and left them sitting alone while he went to the door of the building and talked with a man standing there. The crowd fell silent, staring at their mother.

  “See, Jim, all the men up in the trees!” Daniel whispered once more, leaning close in to his brother’s side.

  “Hush, Dan’l. Be still.”

  The young boy obeyed this time, falling into a bewildered stare at all the things about him he did not understand, for in all the trees along the brick wall men began to appear perched high in the branches, and on the roof of a building across the way stood other men, all gaping at something in the yard back of the wall.

  Their uncle returned and hitched his horse to a ring in one of the trees. Then he hitched their mother’s horse, and all of them got out and stood on the ground in a huddle. The wall of the building rose before them. Strange faces at the barred windows laughed aloud and called down curses at the men below.

  Now they were moving, with a wall of faces on either side of them, their uncle going first, followed by their mother who held each of them by a hand. They went up the steps of the building. The door opened, and their uncle stepped inside. He came back in a moment, and all of them went in and followed a man down a corridor and into a bare room with two chairs and a wooden bench. A man in a black robe sat on one of the chairs, and in front of him on the bench, leaning forward, looking down between his arms, sat their father. His face was lean and gray, which made him look very tall. But his hair was black, and his eyes were blue and mild and strange as he stood up and held the two sons against his body while he stooped his head to kiss their mother. The man in black left the room and walked up and down outside in the corridor. A second stranger stood in the doorway with his back to the room. The father picked up one of the sons and then the other in his arms and looked at them and leaned their faces on his own. Then he sat down on the bench and held them against him. Their mother sat down by them and they were all together.

  A few low words were spoken, and then a silence fell over them all. And in a while the parents spoke a little more and touched one another. But the bare stone floor and the stone walls and the unaccustomed arms of their father hushed the sons with the new and strange. And when the time had passed, the father took his watch from his pocket:

  “I’m goen to give you my watch, Jim. You are the oldest. I want you to keep it till you are a grown man . . . And I want you to always do what Mamma tells you . . . I’m goen to give you the chain, Dan’l.”

  The young brother took the chain, slipped out of his father’s arms, and went to his mother with it. He spread it out on her knee and began to talk to her in a whisper. She bent over him, and again all of them in the room grew silent.

  A sudden sound of marching was heard in the corridor. The man rose up and took his sons in his arms, holding them abruptly. But their uncle, who had been standing with the man in the doorway, came suddenly and took them and went out and down through the big doorway by which they had entered the building. As the doors opened to let them pass, the crowd gathered around the steps pressed forward to look inside. The older boy cringed in his uncle’s arms. His uncle turned and stood with his back to the crowd. Their mother came through the doors. The crowd fell back. Again through a passageway of gazing eyes, they reached the wagons. This time they sat on the seat beside their mother. Leaving their uncle and his wagon behind, they started off on the road that led out of town.

  “Is Papa coming home with Uncle Holly?” Jim asked in a still voice.

  His mother nodded her head.

  Reaching the woods once more and the silence he knew, Daniel whispered to his brother:

  “We got a watch and chain instead, Jim.”

  But Jim neither answered nor turned his eyes.

  MURDER ON THE LIMITED

  Howard Finney

  A long wail from the engine’s whistle rose above the vibrations of the pullmans as the Mississippi Limited peeled away the miles of western Ohio. It was the only reminder Stanley, the pullman conductor, had that there was anyone else awake on the Limited other than himself.

  He glanced through the window of the men’s smoking compartment and saw the lights of Bellefontaine rush up on their left and then drop behind. He set his watch back an hour to Central Standard time. Bellefontaine was the last point on Eastern time. What a break if he could do that with his own life—set it back and gain a handicap, as the Limited did.

  Above the hum of steel on steel and the song of the wheels he heard the ring of the porter’s buzzer at the other end of the car. Queer that—at this hour in the morning.

  A moment later steps sounded in the vestibule and Jeb, the porter, pushed his head through the curtain. His black face, extra dark against the spotless white of his jacket, was set in a frown halfway between worry and fear.

  “Boss, lady wants to see you. Lower Three—”

  A woman pushed by him hastily, pulling a thin kimono about her nightgown. She was middle-aged and plump. Stanley recognized her. She and her husband had made the run from New York. Her white face and haggard eyes brought him to his feet.

  “My husband’s vanished—disappeared right before my eyes,” she blurted huskily.

  “Vanished?”

  “Yes. He went to get me a dr
ink of water and he hasn’t come back.’ The frown left Stanley’s face for a moment.

  “But my dear madam, why alarm yourself so quickly? Maybe he stepped out on a platform for a smoke. Take a look, Jeb.”

  As the porter went out, she pulled back a loose strand of hair from her gray face, and shook her head.

  “No, no. You’re wasting precious time,” she half-whispered in a low, urgent tone.

  “He doesn’t smoke. And the only place he would stop would be here. Something’s happened to him, something strange. He vanished before my very eyes.”

  She shivered and clutched her kimono more tightly about her. It was chilly in the car this time of night. But Stanley saw in her face that it was more than the temperature that made her shiver and turn her stricken eyes toward the slightly swaying curtain to the corridor. He nodded for her to go on.

  “He was coming down the aisle with a cup of water when he disappeared. It was so strange and sudden I thought I was dreaming at first.

  “A few minutes after he had gone for the water, I looked through the curtain and saw him coming down the aisle with the cup in his hand. I pulled myself up in bed to take the water. A moment later, when I thought it strange he hadn’t reached the berth, I looked out again. The aisle was empty. He’d vanished. It was just as though I’d never seen him there a minute before.

  “The paper cup was lying in the middle of the car. I waited a few moments, thinking perhaps he’d spilled the water and gone back for more. But he didn’t come and when I looked out again, the paper cup was gone too.”

  She glanced around the room and for an instant at the curtain, her features drawn and haunted.

  The sinister import of her words stirred Stanley uneasily. Thirty years on the railroad had taught him to evaluate the excited demands of passengers for their true worth. But this woman’s story was a new one, fantastic, and yet touched with truth.

  The door of the vestibule slammed and he heard the voices of Kelley, the railroad conductor, and Hunt, the brakeman.