And at home the boy’s father... a lawyer in a Virginia town. While the boy was in college he served a term as county prosecuting attorney.
The boy described him to Kit. He was a small fat man and a constant hard drinker, although he did not drink in public. The boy said he was always having what he called “illnesses,” staying at home sometimes in his room for days. He drank and talked aloud to himself, the aunt protecting him from the outside world. She fought with him, tried to take his liquor from him but he lied to her, said it was all gone, that he hadn’t any... he had become very canny about hiding it. The household in this mood, sometimes for days... people of the town knowing and not knowing...
He was after all a Weathersmythe.
The aunt sometimes giving way to tears and sometimes to anger. There were bitter quarrels. The aunt owned the house in which they lived. What money the elder Weathersmythe had left had been left to her. He recovered from one of his bad times, the boy said, and went abroad. He was in court, prosecuting mountain men for making perhaps the very liquor he had been consuming the week before. He was strutting before other men, speaking of his family.
“I am a Weathersmythe.”
The boy Alfred told Kit that he didn’t care if he was caught, running liquor for Tom Halsey. He told Kit that he had himself tried drinking for a time but that he didn’t like it. It gave him only a silly sick feeling. It seemed to Kit that, in coming with Tom’s crowd, he half convinced himself that he was being an adventurer like his grandfather, and that half he had done it hoping to be caught, and the family disgraced.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
AND SO TOM Halsey had sent for Kit. It was after the boy Alfred Weathersmythe had left her and she was a little uncertain about what he was doing and it was after the time when the new federal man had spoken to her in the street and when she knew vaguely that there was trouble for Tom ahead.
She was waiting, she hardly knew what for. She was told that the boy, Alfred, was now attached to Tom’s person. There was a story that Tom, like a city gangster or a Huey Long, had begun going about accompanied by a guard.
Had the boy Alfred been made one of his guards? The idea amused and startled Kit. She was told to go to Kate and went on a night in the fall.
It was a clear night and Kit was nervous. Her relations with Kate had also changed and there was that story, told her by the mountain man, member of Tom’s crowd, about the attempt of the ex-city rough, Steve Wyagle, to elbow in on Tom’s game.
Kit went to Kate’s somewhat grimly. She was in a curious position. For two or three years she had been making what had seemed to her a good deal of money. For perhaps a year there had been the secret longing to get out, begin a new life, but there was also the question to be settled... if she began a new life what sort of life was it to be? Like the boy Alfred Weathersmythe and others of Tom’s crowd she had known it was the excitement of the life of the rumrunner that had held her. Young Weathersmythe was not the only young fellow, of some so-called “good family” who had dipped into rum-running or some other form of boot-legging. Kit for example-had heard from young Weathersmythe a story... it had been told to the young man’s father by a Chicago man who had come to his house on some matter of business... the boy in an adjoining room listening while the two men talked... the amused cynicism of the Chicago man...
.. The boy’s father, at that time ambitious to become a member of the legislature of his state, political follower at the moment of Bishop Cannon...
.. He also cynical enough.
.. The father had begun the conversation with the Chicago man... they sat in the Weathersmythe house, the two men with a bottle between them...
.. The Chicago man... “You are, as I understand it, strong, that is to say politically, for prohibition?”
.. “Yes.” Laughter... the boy unknown to the two men sitting in a near-by room, the door open, reading a book. If he had got a kind of hatred of his father, a hatred based partly on a growing feeling that the father had been cheap and unfair with his mother, partly on boyish hatred of hypocrisy... if he had this feeling he had at the same time the feeling that his father was clever.
He was a man who enjoyed drinking, even getting drunk. Young Alfred told Kit that more than once, when the father was on one of his secret sprees, he had seen him coming out of his room, his hair disheveled, staggering along a hallway to the bathroom...
.. and then, perhaps a week later, the same man up before the voters. He would be making a prohibition speech...
.. In some way making the people like it, the church in his legislative district endorsing him, preachers working for his election...
.. When he had been prosecuting attorney, his perhaps prosecuting, getting sent off to jail, some man from the mountain district of the county from whom he had himself bought liquor...
.. In some way making the man stand up to the deception, making him accept it. “If you say a word I’ll simply call you a liar... I’m after all a Weathersmythe.”
.. “Damn the Weathersmythes,” the boy had once said indignantly to Kit.
.. “It will be your word against mine. If you lay low I’ll get the judge to go light on you.”
.. He wouldn’t have bragged about being a Weathersmythe, would have been too smart for that. He would have made the force of the fact that he was a Weathersmythe operate on the mind of the mountain man. The mountain man would have been a poor and no doubt illiterate man from the hills, not, after all, unlike young Alfred’s mother’s father or unlike Kit’s own people.
The two men talking in the Weathersmythe house.
“Yes, of course, politically, I am for prohibition. I’d like to see any man get elected to office in this state just now who wasn’t.
“What, with all the moralists for it, the church people all strong for it?
“That old fraud of a Bishop holding the whip over us.”
Young Weathersmythe’s father telling the Chicago man, also a lawyer... in the Virginia county of some legal matter connected with the settling up of a Virginia estate...
“I was in Washington. I was in Senator Blaon’s office.” Laughter. “You know what a strong prohibitionist he is.
“He is one of our great fighters for the principle of prohibition.
“Of course we had a drink.” More laughter.
“Do you know what the old cuss uses as his racket? He has, you see, this bottle he keeps in his desk.... He is a great tippler. So it is perfectly legal stuff, issued you see for purely medicinal purposes, prescription of a doctor, etc., etc., etc.
“So he must keep refilling the bottle. You see I took him some myself. He is a man raised on our corn. He likes it. He keeps refilling the bottle. You see he feels that, if by some accident they catch him, he will be quite secure. He buys nothing from the Senate boot-leggers. We fellows down here keep him supplied.”
Laughter of the two men, such respectable citizens, in a Virginia house. The Chicago man told a story of a young man graduated with honors from the University of Chicago. He had come into the office of the Chicago lawyer. “He had a sample case with him, wanted to establish a trade with me, had a good sales talk.
“So he let me sample his goods and we got into talk.
“He had been educated to business, told me that he had after graduation looked over the field. He decided quite calmly that the liquor business was the best business going at the moment.
“There would be a risk of course but in what business is there not a risk and as for legality...”
The bright young college graduate, in the office of the Chicago lawyer had held forth on the subject of legality. What great business was there in America that had been built on legality? The college boy had studied the history of the great oil companies, steel companies, railroads, mining, power, public utility companies. “There are more immediate profits, quick returns, in the liquor racket for the man who has no stake.” The fellow was like Tom Halsey — shrewd mountain man and shrewd college boy... “When I ha
ve got a stake I’ll look elsewhere. This racket won’t last. I’m in to get what I can while the getting is good.”
It was like the stories, always being whispered about college campuses all over America, of young women, also anxious to get on, caught up by the American cry of “progress, advancement... get on in the world... put it across”... young women making their way through college by working nights at the oldest of all women’s trades.
Kit felt that she had been spoiled for returning to the life of a working woman. Business was a mystery to her. She had got a kind of prejudice against all buying and selling. She had herself never bought or sold any liquor. If there was in her a hunger for marriage with some man she was in the position of innumerable other American women... she had not found the man she wanted.
She arrived at Kate’s house at night and Kate came out and got into her car. She did not tell Kit where they were going. “Tom wants to see you.” Kate fell into silence, speaking only to direct Kit along roads.
Tom Halsey had arranged a meeting with the man Steve Wyagle. Kit thought... during this period of her experience as one of Tom’s crowd... after all a minor member of the crowd, unknown to most of the others... leading as she did such a solitary life. She was, it is true, known to them, a figure the newspapers had picked up, made into a half celebrity... she thought that but for the fact that she was the wife of Tom’s son she would have gone through the whole experience unnoticed by him...
The power of the man Wyagle had, she concluded, been growing. He had been going about among Tom’s crowd, talking of Tom’s growing greediness. It was even possible that Steve had made some arrangements with the federal man. There were such arrangements made all through the prohibition times, officers of the law making deals with the lawbreakers. “You turn such and such a one up, help us get the evidence we need.
“We’ll take care of you.”
With Tom Halsey gone, perhaps serving time in some federal prison, there would be a chance for the new man. Kit and Kate drove along a road, getting some fifteen or twenty miles from Kate’s house... it was a bright clear fall evening... and turned into a little wood road. They parked the car, leaving it in a little opening among trees, Kit growing constantly more and more nervous. She kept looking at Kate but Kate’s face told her nothing. The conviction was growing in her that she was being taken to some out of the way place. It might be the end of her.
“But would the woman Kate give herself to a thing of that sort?”
The two women walked in silence along a wood path coming at last to a fence at the wood’s edge and once, while they were still in the wood, Kit put her hand on Kate’s arm. Her own hand trembled. She had grown pale. Her voice trembled.
“Where are we going, Kate? What’s up?” she asked, but Kate did not answer and, as on another occasion when Kit had become frightened by the possibilities of what might happen to herself through Tom, she grew a little angry.
Kit had never carried a gun but now she wished she had one. There was a small flashlight in the pocket of her coat and she took it out and held it gripped in her right hand. There was no need for it. The night was clear and there was a moon.
“Be quiet,” Kate had said to Kit, her voice suddenly harsh, and the two women approached the fence at the edge of the wood in silence. There were some bushes growing at just that spot and they got behind them.
They stood thus, Kit didn’t know for how long. There was a clearing in the wood and in the clearing an old barn and in the bright moonlight Kit could see the remains of the foundation of what had once been a house. It was one of Tom’s liquor storing places but Kit had never been there. She stood, half angry, half afraid, beside Kate, occasionally looking at her. Thoughts were racing in her head. Formerly, all through the first year and a half of her employment by Tom she had felt Kate as her friend. Now she was doubtful. She was frightened.
Had the woman Kate brought her to that place on Tom’s orders to put her “on the spot”? She kept looking furtively about but there was only the silence of a wood at night, a silence broken only by the little steady sound of insect life. Once an owl hooted. The sound came from far off, somewhere in the distance.
There was the long silence and then it was broken. Kit saw that Tom Halsey had out-smarted the ex-city rough, Steve Wyagle. The man had been induced to come to the spot, to the old barn in the clearing in the wood, accompanied by three of what he thought to be his own men, men pledged to him in the effort that was to be made to unseat Tom. There had been some kind of assurance given the man Steve. “You come with three of your own men and I will come with but one of mine.
“We will have a talk. We will talk things over.” Steve Wyagle came along the woodland path, the three men with him, and went into the clearing and Kit saw that one of the men was a fellow who had been with Steve, one of his companions on that first Sunday evening when she had gone with Gordon to Kate’s house. She remembered the impression got at that time, an impression of cruelty in the man’s eyes. With his three companions Wyagle crossed the open space before Kit and went into the barn.
There was another time of silence and again Kate trembled. If it were true that Kate had brought her to the place to put her on the spot, to be killed, these were the men to do it. She looked about prepared for flight through the wood, and her hand gripped the flashlight. She thought vaguely of Kate, anger sweeping over her. “If I start to run and she tries to hold me I’ll hit her,” she thought. Kate stood close to her. Kate’s eyes were watching her.
And then Tom Halsey came and he was accompanied only by the boy Alfred Weathersmythe. They came along the woodland path passing close to the bush back of which Kate and Kit stood and went into the clearing. They did not enter the barn but stood silently in the clearing.
It was a tense moment. Kit had a sudden and intense return of an old admiration for Tom. He stood, silently, in the clear place, to all appearances unarmed and then Kit saw him lean over and whisper to young Alfred Weathersmythe. It was not until afterwards that she thought her way through what was happening that night, what was about to happen.
Tom, having taken the boy Alfred to be ostensibly one of his bodyguards, having him about day after day, had evidently, from the first, had something definite in mind.
He had intended making a killer of the boy. That had been his purpose. Kit did not know how he did it — but she knew that there was always something almost hypnotic about Tom’s quiet power over others.
And he had got the boy and certainly the fact would be an advantage. There was murder to be done. It was to be done by a Weathersmythe. Kit thought that he might have worked on the romantic folly of the boy. “Are you a brave man? Do you dare to be brave?”
The boy foolishly thinking of himself as another like that grandfather, the Mosby man. Once when he was a small boy he had asked the grandfather— “but could you kill a man if you met him, say when you were riding in the road — if there was just you two?”
“Yes. If he was a Yank.” The grandfather had been stern.
What a foolish question to have asked!
In the clearing the two, Tom and the boy, stood... Kit sure afterwards that the boy, like herself, must have been trembling with fright. She said she got a sudden conviction of what was going to happen. “I wanted to run to them, to cry out to him— ‘Stop it, stop it!’” She wanted to cry. She did start forward but Kate, putting out her hand, gripped her arm.
They stood in silence and then Steve Wyagle, the city rough, professional killer, walked out of the shadows of the barn and toward Tom. He was accompanied by the three roughs, lieutenants of his own as he thought but, even at that moment, Kit knew he had been out-smarted. Tom had got to his three companions, he had bought them off.
“Hello, Tom,” Steve said, cheerfully enough, stepping forward. What a fool he was! He said no more. It was evident that both Tom and the young Weathersmythe were armed and as Steve stepped toward them, the boy shot and at that moment Steve’s three companions grabbed h
is arms.
They had got his arms and held him, and while he struggled Tom put his hand on young Weathersmythe’s shoulder and led him forward until he was within a few feet of the struggling man. The boy seemed paralyzed and Kit thought that even from where she stood with Kate she could see his body tremble.
He stood thus and Tom spoke to him, his voice still quiet, commanding, and Kit said that he even seemed to help the boy raise his arm... “Shoot,” he said sharply, and the boy did.
He shot again and again in a kind of hysteria of shooting. He stood over the fallen man and poured bullets into him, keeping it up until the gun he held was empty and then turning he bolted past Kit and into the wood and Kit, also half hysterical and forgetting Kate, ran after him.
Kit got into her car and driving out of the wood got into a country road and sitting there in her car saw, in the bright moonlight, young Alfred Weathersmythe’s figure running in the distance. There was a long dip in the road and she saw the figure come up the crest of a distant hill and disappear.... She threw the car into gear and followed and presently overtook him.
The running figure was Weathersmythe and when she had run the car alongside him he stopped.
He had become dumb. How white he was! He stood in the road trembling and Kit got out of the car and helped him into the seat. “No. No,” he kept protesting. She drove slowly along the road until she came to a little wooden bridge and then stopped the car beside the road. He had begun to cry like a small child, and she took him into her arms and held him, caressing his face with her hand. She tried to talk to him but he would not answer. “Why did you do it, boy, why did you?” The feeling that had been growing in her as regards Tom, a feeling of distrust and suspicion, had become an intense hatred and she sat with the boy in the car, her arms about him, swearing violently. Words she had heard, remembered, intense bitter words, filthy words rose to her lips. She herself trembled.
Complete Works of Sherwood Anderson Page 201