The Will

by Reed Arvin

  Hesston’s E-mail program marked the message sent, and he closed the laptop and put it in his briefcase. That, along with a small bag of clothing, needed to be made ready for a quick trip. In the meantime, he would give the trial one more day. A lot had happened, but there were pieces still in play. Durand could well find Ellen or even Boyd, and take care of things in his own way. If he did the winds might blow back in his direction. In the meantime, he would show up in Brackman’s court in the morning, ready to do battle with the cocky, annoying lawyer from Chicago. But if things deteriorated one more day, he was gone.

  Raymond rummaged his way through the hedge dividing Ellen’s backyard and that of the empty field directly behind it. He quietly slipped between the trees into Ellen’s yard, the lessening rain covering the sound of his movements.

  It had taken more than two hours to retrace his steps to town, and in that time the storm had blown itself out, moving west across Matfield Green. Dark night descended on Council Grove, a thick blanket of clouds obscuring moon and stars. Boyd moved like a shadow to his hideout; to his relief, nothing had been tampered with. Once again the covering of limbs and leaves had held up, and he lifted the canvas opening to enter. He gazed briefly through a small slit at the back of Ellen’s house thirty yards away.

  The wind and rain had blown undergrowth and wet leaves into his shelter, and he pushed the moldy piles aside to reveal a tightly wrapped parcel. He lifted it, pulling leaves off the top. The packet was substantial, covered in brown wrapping paper and secured with burlap string. He hefted the package, feeling its weight. Satisfied, he sat heavily down among the leaves and unwrapped it.

  After a moment’s struggle the string fell away from the package. When he pulled the paper back, several folds of heavy, dark blue fabric were revealed. Boyd gazed at the material a moment, his expression reverent. His face was streaked with rain, sweat, and oil. “Bank,” he whispered quietly. He rummaged through the package and pulled from it a battered pair of black dress shoes, and another, much smaller package. He set the smaller parcel carefully down on the ground and, picking up the dark blue cloth, came unsteadily to his feet. The material unfurled itself down toward the ground, and a wrinkled suit coat appeared, followed by a matching pair of pants.

  Boyd fumbled with his belt; his own pants fell down over his grimy knees, and kicking off his old shoes, he stepped clumsily out of them. The long walk through the rain and oil picked up from the well had left him a bedraggled mess. His hair hung down in long wet strands, and his legs were muddy below the knees. He bent down and put on the suit pants, pulling the clean fabric over his dirty legs. He then pulled the shoes over his soaking, thick, gray farm socks. The pants didn’t fit particularly well; they were tight in the waist and seat, and he fastened them with difficulty.

  Boyd brushed out the suit coat a moment, covering it with oily muck as he ran his hand over it. He put it on; it clashed harshly with his checked cotton shirt, which he had not changed. He reached for his collar and fastened it tight around his neck; then, taking from the coat pocket a light blue tie, he stood up. He tied the tie deliberately, pulling it tight and straightening it with meticulous formality. He took from the coat pocket a small mirror and a comb. He stared into the glass a long moment, his eyes unblinking. Boyd touched his scraggly beard tenderly, running his dirty fingers through his mustache and along the side of his face. He took the comb and passed it through his matted hair; it caught on a dozen tangles, refusing to move.

  After a long moment he put away the mirror and comb and peered out at Ellen’s house through the cardboard slit. The lights had come on in the back rooms while he had been dressing; he could see her form now, blurred through the narrow opening and the distance. She was in the kitchen, and he could make out her outline as she stood before the sink. Boyd turned toward the canvas door, his breathing shallow and rapid; without deciding, he passed from the shelter into the yard.

  Ellen was taking off her high heels when she heard a muted rustling behind the house. Animals sometimes rambled up near her porch sniffing for food, but this was heavier, clumsier. She stopped, one shoe still suspended in her hand, and listened a moment. The wind creaked through the aging back window jambs, reminding her of long-needed caulking. Never mind, she thought. I’ll be selling soon. I’m dead in this town now. Hearing nothing but the wind, she continued undressing, and her tight, pale green dress fell to the floor beneath her. She walked barefoot in bra and panties to her closet and stepped in, leaving the door ajar. She fingered a dressing gown, but as she pulled it off its hanger she heard movement again, more distinct and closer. An uneasy chill moved up her spine.

  A word came soundlessly to her mind: Hesston. I let Raymond go, and he’s come for his pound of flesh. She heard another sound and tried to tell herself it was a muskrat, or a possum, that any second she would hear the garbage pail crash off the porch to the ground. Nevertheless, she quietly closed the closet door behind her. She groped for the light and blinked in the sudden glare of an open bulb three feet above her head. Squinting, she looked searchingly up at the top shelf, where a shoe box lay under a substantial stack of sweaters and shirts.

  Another clunk; there was no mistaking it now, something or someone was definitely near her house. Her blood ran cold; she knew that Hesston was capable of doing anything to anyone if he felt it necessary. He wasn’t emotional like Durand. There was a cold, metallic quality to the man that was infinitely more frightening. She reached toward the box above her, but it was just beyond her outstretched fingers. She put her high heels back on in order to pull it down. She opened the box. A small-caliber pistol hid under white wrapping paper, beside it a new box of cartridges. Ellen sat down on the floor of the closet and slowly lifted out the gun. She poured six cartridges into her left hand, and loaded them one by one into the chambers. Her hands were beginning to tremble, and it took concentration to spin the pistol shut and click off the safety. She imagined Frank Hesston’s cold, intelligent face and wondered if she could actually put a bullet into it.

  Fifteen feet from Ellen’s back door Raymond Boyd shook his head absently, then more violently, asking his voices for quiet. For the last thirty feet or so they had been calling more loudly, confusing him. But he knew what he wanted to do. It didn’t matter now where the voices came from, if they were from inside or outside; all he had to do was push through them for a few more minutes and it would all be over.

  Raymond stared up at the back door of Ellen’s house from behind a cottonwood tree. He had been still for several minutes after he had strayed through some underbrush, making a racket. But he had done penance for the noise, and now he could move on. He pushed down his voices, and with a surprisingly calm movement, stepped from behind the tree and stood exposed, for the first time a direct line of sight between himself and the porch. His feet hurt in the dress shoes, and that helped clear his mind a little; he ground his little toe against the stiff leather, increasing his discomfort.

  He moved forward. His head hurt brutally, and that, too, was a good thing. Like all pain, it helped him think, and he was thinking with a crystalline sharpness now, each thought outlined in fantastically bright light in his mind. His thoughts were tiny dots buried in his eyelids, burning laser-bright in his own inner darkness. He glanced once again at his clothes; bank clothes, he thought, remembering things he hadn’t allowed to come to his conscious mind for more than twenty-five years. Bank clothes I wore, didn’t I, bird? And to church. Pews and pretty hats and the reverend people. He smiled, the pain in his head pulsing brightly, showering sparks against his skull. The thought formed once again that had been boring through his brain every day, and sometimes every moment, since the city boy had brought the will: The virgin awaits. She is inside. He walked forward, pausing at the porch. He stepped quietly onto the steps, testing his weight. To his surprise, he was sweating profusely. He didn’t understand this; he felt perfectly calm now, perfectly free. But perspiration beaded off his forehead and cheeks, beginning to drip. The virg
in awaits, he thought, pushing forward. He put his foot onto the second step; a loud creak came from the dry wood. He stared, uncomprehending; he felt light, ephemeral, like a mist. He could float. He took another step, this one silent. He looked up into the dark sky, but no stars were visible. The virgin awaits, and there must be sacrifice.

  Inside the house, Ellen heard the stair creak and wrapped herself in a robe, clutching the sides to her waist. She slowly opened the door of the closet and looked out into the dark room; nothing was visible through the windows. Sticking the gun hesitantly out in front of her, she stepped into her bedroom. At that moment she heard her porch steps groan once again, and she felt the first genuine thrill of fear. Only a person could make such a sound; there was no longer any possibility of convincing herself of anything else. She gripped the gun tightly and crept through her room to the hallway, trying to remember if she had locked the back door. In that instant she got her answer: she heard the worst sound in the world—the knob turning, the door slowly opening. Her hand was shaking, the gun vibrating aimlessly before her. In fear, she called on her well of anger for what could pass for courage. Years of practice made this intuitive; she had often needed strength against predators, and her anger was always close by, easily awakened. I’ve been a victim for the last man, she thought. Bastards using me, hang-dog sneakers lying to wives. Never again.

  The sound of footsteps made her legs wobble. He was inside. Here. Now. She fanned her rage. “Damn you,” she whispered, “and damn all men. You all wanted the same thing from me.” She thrust the gun out with both hands and crouched down at the edge of the hallway. She could hear him breathing heavily, his living, horrifying sound coming from her left, around the corner over by the door. One step forward out of the hall and a half turn would bring them face-to-face. She wasn’t going to wait any longer, not going to give him the satisfaction. Her muscles were stiff with tension as she prepared to lunge; cursing loudly, she pushed out into the living room.

  Raymond felt an ecstatic happiness as he saw her suddenly materialize before him. The failing outside light did little to illuminate the room, and she coalesced out of the darkness, the virgin of the dusk, suddenly, miraculously solid. It was as it should be. His brain was singing with noises and explosions, and he felt lighter than helium. She is here, he thought, here with me. There must be sacrifice. He smiled beatifically, and in an unexpected, sublime moment, the noises stopped and he heard nothing. The whole world became utterly silent, a comfortable blanket of madness stopping all sound. The virgin, her outline backlit from the light of a distant room, shone out to him. Wrapped in that silence and pale light he thought she was more beautiful than any living creature: holy and untouched, pristine and sanctified.

  The virgin was moving her mouth excitedly, but in his cocoon he could not hear her. He stood in his stillness and pulled the small package from his inner coat pocket. Papers he offered her, papers of power. He peeled several pages off the package and let them fall to the ground between them: they were covered with faded and rain-smeared writing, a hodgepodge of legal documents, bank statements, and notebook papers. They fluttered between them a moment, until at last he released his copy of the will itself, unwrapping it carefully off a long, straight razor. He watched her mouth moving rapidly as he opened the razor, and he looked in awe at the virgin, watched her trembling now, vibrating with celestial beauty and power. The virgin was shaking, convulsing, weeping sacred tears. Holding the open razor in his hand he reached strongly out to her, and in that moment he saw a flash of light come straight out from her, a star shooting from her holy body, flaring toward him like a Roman candle. A bullet passed by, narrowly missing him; glass exploded from a window behind him and to his right, showering him with bright, reflective fragments. It was more glorious, more miraculous than he could have imagined. Sparks in his brain, in his skull, in the night sky, all with the virgin before him. It was a gift from Alpha, a blessing from Omega. It was heaven. He opened his mouth to speak. “Fools and whores, let there be absolution,” he spoke, and the sound of his voice shattered the air, returning his hearing. With his words the virgin’s mouth stopped moving; the two stood in sudden silence in the room. The virgin was crying again, weeping tiny crystal diamonds that fell from her eyes.

  “Fools and whores,” Raymond said, “let peace come unto thee. Let your pain be washed into the sea of black. Sleep, now.”

  Raymond took the razor and quietly, serenely sliced the veins on his left wrist to the bone. Blood spurted upward in strong pulses, covering his dirty clothes. He smiled at Ellen, fell to his knees, and let the darkness overcome him.

  Henry, Amanda, and John Brown stood in the mud, transfixed. Behind them, a blood-red moon hung, obscured intermittently by drifting patches of gray and black. Before them, the sky above the Flinthills was being scorched red, purple, and orange. A tower of flame shot upward from the exploded wellhead, sending a shrieking, dangerous wildness out from the bowels of the earth.

  Word of the explosion was spreading rapidly, and a crowd of people was gathering on the Crandall ranch. The rain had finally stopped, and Collier’s black-and-white was parked fifty yards away, its headlights vanishing into the brilliance of the flame.

  John Brown stared into the heat and fire. “Of course,” he said quietly. “It’s always so obvious once you see it.” The monumental heat created a wind that blew against their faces. Brown turned to Henry and Amanda, his expression grim. “We’ve all been fools.”

  “What is it?” Henry asked over the whine of erupting flame. “What’s happening?”

  “Gas,” Brown said. “Natural gas. A big field, from the looks of it. Millions of cubic feet. Maybe tens of millions.” He stamped the ground. “Extruded limestone. Lousy for oil. But natural gas can hide there.”

  “But they were pumping oil,” Amanda said. “There’s never even been a gas strike in this area.”

  Henry stared at Brown for a moment, trying to work out the meaning of the geologist’s words. Suddenly, his expression changed. “I have it now,” he said. “The oil was just an excuse to keep the pumps moving. There has to be one more set of pipes.”

  Brown nodded. “That’s right. A second underground set, probably much farther down.” He looked at the well in unabashed admiration. “This was never about oil, not even in the beginning. They only used the oil to justify the pumps.” He looked up at the erupting flame, the light of it casting yellow and orange reflections on his skin. “From the looks of that back-pressure, we could be sitting on the biggest ‘undiscovered’ gas field in the Midwest. For twenty-five years they bring it up, patient, not getting greedy, selling it completely off the books through Durand’s distribution system. It’s beautiful.”

  Amanda’s eyes widened. “I never thought of that.”

  “There was a bigger payoff than you realize,” Brown said. “It works two . . .” Brown hesitated. “No, three ways. They sold the gas off the books, obviously. That was worth a lot. But the real beauty of it was deeper down, almost visionary.”

  “What are you talking about?” Henry asked.

  Brown shook his head. “Twenty-five years ago nobody around here was even selling natural gas,” he said. “It was worthless. They would burn it off just to get rid of it. No market yet. Nobody cared about this land because there wasn’t any oil on it to speak of. But whoever did this must have realized before anybody else that the gas was going to be valuable. So they bought the land on the cheap. That would have been, what, ’70, ’72? Just before the price of gas exploded.”

  “Durand,” Amanda said. “He was always a big risk-taker.”

  “There was another reason to take the risk,” Brown said. “It’s the third level of the scam, the deepest one.” He drew a circle with his foot and pointed to the center. “This is where we are right now, the wellhead. The circle is say, seven, maybe eight miles across. The law says when you hit a strike, all the landowners inside the circle have to get a share.”

  “Of course,” Henry said
, looking at the drawing. “The gas wouldn’t stay within property lines.”

  “Exactly,” Brown said. “You can’t drill a well on one part of a field and quietly pump the whole thing dry. Not legally. The surrounding landowners have to get a piece.” He shook his head. “This whole thing wasn’t just to keep the gas off the tax books. That was sweet. But the point is that a field this big would have made a lot of millionaires around here.”

  Henry shook his head. “It would have created a lot of Crandalls, and Tyler would never have stood for that.” He turned and looked into the blackness behind them toward Crandall’s home. “You son of a bitch,” he said. “You pulled millions out of this field, didn’t pay a dime in tax, and kept out any other claims.”

  “How much are we talking about?” Amanda asked.

  Brown shrugged. “Who knows? But more than twenty years of this . . .” He gestured toward the erupting wellhead. “With back-pressure like that, several million, with that much more ahead.”

  The three watched the blaze in silence for some time. The wind was coming up, and it looked like it might begin to rain again. “We’re still left with this explosion,” Henry said, “and what made it happen.”

  Brown started to speak, but suddenly Sheriff Collier materialized out of the darkness beside them. He was carrying the remains of a large flare.

  “Arson,” he said gruffly. “No doubt about it.” He held up the burnt-out stump. “Somebody wanted to make some noise. Somebody who don’t like Crandalls.”

  “That would do the trick,” Brown said. “Even in the rain. Couple of thousand degrees, completely waterproof. If a guy knew anything about wells, he might be able to pull it off.”