After Eli

by Terry Kay

  Owen was afraid, more afraid than he had ever been. Afraid of the owl and the night and the house where he must hide. He crawled on his hands and knees to the center of the island of trees. The rock was there, as Michael had promised. It was the size of a wagon body and dull white in the bare light of the quarter-moon. He stood and made his way quietly behind the rock. He saw a mound of limbs covered with pine straw and he began carefully to uncover the camouflage. The sack was there and he opened it and found that it contained a blanket and biscuits and potatoes. The food was fresh and he wondered about Michael’s story of replenishing the supplies: Was it true, what he had said, or had he planned the night of the escape? Owen tied the top of the sack securely into a knot and lifted it over his shoulder. He knew he could not rest; he had four miles to go before the house, perhaps six. He could travel the road by night, but if he waited until sunrise he would have to slip through the woods and it would be risky, even on a Sunday morning. He stepped quickly into the road. He heard the owl, far off. He looked once at the Pettit house. It was a blot, a silhouette, against the skirt of the woods.

  The blue steel of morning was beginning to seep over the mountains as he passed hurriedly by Floyd Crider’s house. He heard a dog bark and another answer and he broke into a steady run until he was far from the house. He wondered if the dogs had awakened Floyd.

  He was hurting inside. His nose had begun to bleed and he wiped at it absently with the sleeve of his shirt. He tried to set the distance to the farmhouse where Lester and Mary Caufield had been murdered. He had been to the house once with his father, when he was very young, before his father had begun to punish them for their unknown sins. The house had then belonged to a man named Alton King, who was Lester’s grandfather and who had outlived three wives and six of his ten children. Owen remembered the story he had heard from his father about Alton King. His third wife was only thirteen when he married her, more child than woman, and she still played with dolls. To please her, Alton King, who was nearing seventy, had built a dollhouse for her in the backyard—a dollhouse with doll rooms and doll furniture. In the daytime, when Alton was in the fields working, she would play in her dollhouse, and at night she would be his wife. The girl had died at fifteen in labor. The child was stillborn.

  Suddenly, Owen felt the seizure of a chill.

  He stopped in the road and looked around him. To his left, above him, was the house. He could hear the water-song of the stream that ran into Deepstep Creek and the soft crush of sand as he turned slowly in the track of the road. He imagined that he heard a wind, but there was no wind, only the early yawning of the day as it unfolded like the sleepy opening of an eye. He took two steps and stopped. He thought of Lester Caufield. They had been friends. They had talked of going away to work together. Lester was always laughing. Always.

  The house seemed to grow larger as Owen approached it. It was gray and silent. There was a look of waste about it, like any abandoned thing. He looked at the windows that had been coated with the frost of cobwebs. Under one window, at the front of the house, there was a windowbox containing one dead flower stalk.

  He circled the back of the house to the porch stoop, and mounted the steps. The board that had been nailed across the screen door was loose—Michael, he thought—and he pried it off easily. He stood at the door, his hands poised inches away from the smooth knob of mountain laurel. The house seemed to resist him, to warn him. He knew it had been cleared and boarded quickly by men who were frightened and he knew it was a house no one would ever live in again. It would decay like a buried thing and the roof would fall around its chimneys and people traveling along the road would not stop to look at it, but would rush past as though skirting an evil that could never be put to rest. It was a house of murder and a house of murder was an ominous place, with screams that had been driven into the walls like hidden nails.

  He touched the knob and opened the screen door and then turned the handle of the wooden door. It was unlocked. Owen opened it and stepped inside the kitchen. The room was empty and he could feel his breathing and his heartbeat echoing, thundering in his temples. He moved slowly into the house, his arms outstretched before him, groping blindly. The house was the same as the house he had lived in all his life, the same as dozens of other houses in the mountains: the kitchen, the sideroom off the kitchen, the living room with its brick fireplace, the bedrooms along the back of the house.

  He slipped numbly through the doorways of the rooms, a dull hypnotic lured by a voice outside his mind. His body felt leaden. His vision was blurred. He could sense an obscure presence, like sleep, choking his brain and he shook his head to clear the trance. His eyes narrowed and focused and he realized in horror that he was standing in the bedroom where Lester and Mary had been murdered. His eyes were fixed on the single piece of furniture still in the house—the frame of the bed. He felt the ice of fear crawling over his skin, under his shirt, and his mind flashed to a scene that he had heard described the day after Lester and Mary had been discovered, before the people of the valley quit speaking of the murder: Lester on the floor, his head hinged back, his throat open like a wide mouth, and Mary, her face covered with one pillow and her naked body lifted under the lower back by the other pillow, her legs bent at the knees and spread, as though stopped in the middle of a leap.

  “God,” he muttered. He tried to tear his eyes from the bed frame, but could not.

  He heard a flitting, scratching noise in the corner of the room and he jerked the knife from his belt and whirled to the sound. The light of the coming morning poured through the window in a silver fog and he saw a field mouse dive into a crack in the wall, and he heard the mouse race inside the wall.

  He began to tremble. He sank weakly to his knees and caught the knife in both hands and held it tight to his abdomen. A painful guttural cry rose in him, turning shrill in his mouth, and he began jabbing the knife into the hard oak wood of the floor.

  * * *

  At sunrise, Garnett and Michael left Yale to drive to the Pettit house. They rode in silence until they crossed the bridge at Deepstep Creek and then Michael asked, “Will they find him, Doc?”

  Garnett shrugged and twisted his hands on the steering wheel of the car.

  “I don’t know,” he confessed. “There’s a good chance. Curtis did what I thought he would. He has only those four men, but I know them. They live in the woods. Come out maybe once or twice a year and then only to Yale. You’d never find one of them in Pullen’s, that’s for sure. If they do any drinking, they drink their own and they do it alone, or with each other.”

  “Would they have any idea where the boy’ll likely be found?”

  “They know it better than a pack of bloodhounds,” answered Garnett. “There’s one of them—Tolly Wakefield, the one Curtis mentioned last night—who could go off and live in those woods and never lift a hand at planting a seed. Only man I know who could feed you a seven-course meal of nothing but berries and find every damn one of them within a half-mile radius.”

  Michael smiled. The doctor was easily awed, he thought.

  “The boy. Will they harm him?” he asked.

  Garnett shook his head. He said, “Not likely. Not unless he forces it. Even then I doubt it. The one that worries me is George. It’s a good thing Curtis left him at the jail, but no matter what I say to him now, or what Curtis says, George feels justified in being angry. He thinks he was right all along. He won’t keep quiet about this. He’ll have it all over the valley before sunset, but, God knows, as much as I hate to say it, I understand the poor bastard. One thing I’ve learned, Irishman—these people may be simple, but they’re noble in their own way. They damn well may kill one another, and they do if they feel vengeance, but they’d never do some of the things you and I have seen. I remember a boy in Boston, when I was studying medicine. He was brutalized by another man. Sodomy. Well, by God, that wouldn’t happen here. Never. You’d find a man like that pinned to a tree, drying out like a rabbit skin.”

 
“I’d say you’re right,” replied Michael.

  “Damn right I am.”

  Garnett thought for a moment, then laughed softly. He said, “Tolly once killed a bear with a woodaxe, and that’s not one of the tall tales you always hear. It’s the truth. He was cutting wood one day when this bear appeared out of nowhere, standing on its hind legs, ready to rip him apart. Tolly had a piece of wood in one hand and the axe in the other. He threw the wood at the bear—just tossed it like a ball—and when the bear reached to catch it with its front paws, Tolly drove the axe a half-foot into its heart.”

  “My God,” Michael whispered in amazement.

  “They’re not ordinary men, Irishman. Not at all. We’re ordinary. You and me.”

  “I’d believe it,” Michael agreed. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and began to drum his fingers on the dashboard of the car.

  “What’s bothering you, Irishman?” asked Garnett. “You’ve been uncommonly quiet for the last couple of hours.”

  Michael laughed wearily.

  “Nothin’ important, I don’t suppose,” he said. “Just thinkin’ about the boy. Some of the things he said in the last few nights, when the two of us would sit around talkin’.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, like—like his talkin’ about Eli.”

  “Eli?”

  “True,” answered Michael. “Surprised me, too. But you’ve got to remember, Doc, you’re the only one who knows the facts of that. To a man, everybody else believes I’m kin to Eli. And the boy especially. Said I even reminded him of Eli. Said he remembered Eli comin’ around when he was little, and how alike we was, tellin’ outlandish stories.”

  “Well, by God, there’s some truth in that,” exclaimed Garnett. “You could’ve come from the same belly, if that’s a measure of it.”

  Michael laughed again. He rolled his head against the back of the car seat. He knew he must be careful what he said to the doctor.

  “Anyway,” he continued, “Owen got onto the money Eli was supposed to have buried somewhere on the farm.”

  “There is no money,” Garnett said firmly.

  “Maybe not, Doc, but you’d never prove it by the men in town. I’ve heard many a jest about it.”

  “I told you you would. It’s a good story.”

  “It is, indeed,” agreed Michael. “But the boy seemed preoccupied by it. Kept sayin’ I should be lookin’ for it in different places, like it was a game he was playin’ in his head. Like a lad on a treasure hunt.”

  Garnett frowned. He mumbled, “Sounds funny, coming from him.”

  “I thought the same,” Michael said. “He told me once that he’d be off to Europe if he had that money. Asked a lot about Ireland. Said we ought to go there together.”

  “Seems strange,” Garnett replied.

  “It was. Him goin’ through what he’d suffered. I’d try changin’ the subject, but he’d guide me back to it, askin’ if I’d looked under the house, or in the chimney, or in the loft of the barn.”

  “You wouldn’t think it’d ever cross his mind.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. Not in the least.”

  “What’d you tell him, Irishman?”

  “About what?”

  “The money,” Garnett said, smiling. “Where you’d looked. You have looked?”

  Michael broke into a tired laugh.

  “Looked?” he said in mock seriousness. “Doc, I’ve torn the place apart. Looked everywhere any kind of sane man would’ve hid such a grand prize, but it must’ve been that Eli was a genius of sorts.”

  Garnett turned the car into the road leading to the Pettit house. He motioned with his hand to the blue ribbon of smoke rising from the kitchen chimney. The smile was still on his face. His eyes sparkled.

  “There’s your money, Irishman, burning away, cooking bacon,” he said lightly. “That’s the kind of genius Eli was. There’s not any money. Never has been.”

  “Did you ever think there was, Doc? Ever? When it was first mentioned?”

  Garnett thought for a moment, then replied, “Maybe. Maybe. Eli was a persuasive man and there were times when he had me believing him. But I’ve never seen any evidence of the money, and it’s been a long time. That’s why people want to believe it so bad, because they still haven’t seen it. It’s like anything, Michael; people believe what fascinates them. Owen must’ve been fascinated by it. Hell, he’s been dirt poor all his life, like everybody else up here. Who wouldn’t want something like that? The only thing I’ve ever wanted so bad it hurt was a woman I met in Boston. Most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen, but bound up in that damn straitjacket of convention. She was Catholic and I wasn’t and, God, what a waste it was—and I don’t mean that against the Catholics, because I know that’s your persuasion; it was just a goddamn waste. No matter how much I wanted her—and I would’ve given up everything; tried to, in fact—I couldn’t have her. So, I know how they feel. It’s a dream, Irishman, but you don’t know it’s a dream because it seems so damn real, and you find yourself saying, ‘It’s got to be real; I can touch it. It’s got to be real.’ But it’s not, Irishman. It’s not.”

  Garnett stopped the car in front of the house. He sat staring through the windshield, remembering. He could see the girl again, turning her face as he leaned to kiss her. He could hear her voice saying no and he could see the ice in her eyes.

  “Doc?”

  “Yeah,” Garnett said. He wiped at a small necklace of perspiration under his chin.

  “That why you came here?” Michael asked softly.

  Garnett leaned against the seat and smiled.

  “I don’t know,” he answered. “Maybe. I don’t know, Irishman. I’ve been here too long to remember.”

  16

  IT WAS LATE afternoon when Michael approached the house through the cover of trees. He moved noiselessly, stopping and waiting, watching the house for the prey he knew was there, trapped in the pit of its walls. He was rested and calm. A smile of amusement was on his face. Closing on the house was a game and he played it well, without haste or error, and he was exceedingly proud of his skill. He wondered if Curtis Hill’s small band of woodsmen, led by the bear-killing Tolly Wakefield, could ever track him.

  He was near the back of the house, beside the barn. He could see the board had been removed from the screen door, but he could not see into the darkened windows. If Owen was watching, he was deep in one of the rooms, away from the windows. But Owen would not be watching. Owen would be hiding.

  He sprinted in a crouch to the porch stoop and pressed his ear to the outside planking of the house and listened, but could hear nothing. He pulled himself onto the stoop and quietly opened the doors to the house and stepped inside, closing the doors behind him.

  “Owen,” he whispered. “Owen, it’s me. Michael. Where are you?”

  He heard a noise from the living room—a small, wordless voice—and stepped through the kitchen doorway into the room.

  “Owen?”

  Owen sat huddled in a corner of the room, against the wall, holding the sack of provisions under his left arm and the long steel knife in his right hand. The point of the knife rested loosely against his chest, over his heart.

  “Owen, boy, be careful of that knife,” Michael warned. “You jerk once and it’ll split you open like a melon. I keep it sharp.”

  Owen pulled the knife away from his chest and let it drop to the floor. He rolled his face away from Michael and Michael could see that he had not slept, that he had fallen into the corner of the room hours earlier and had not moved.

  “It’s all right now,” Michael said gently. He crossed the room and knelt before Owen. “There’s nothin’ to be afraid of. I’m here, like I promised, and we’ll be gone soon. Did you eat? I’ve brought along some fresh food. Chicken. The ladies served it to me in my room in the barn and I put it away.” He fumbled in his pocket for the chicken, wrapped in paper, and handed it to Owen. “Come on, now, eat. You’ll be needin’ your strength. We’ll lea
ve soon. Tomorrow night, and you’ll need to be able to travel hard for a day or so.”

  Owen nibbled at the chicken. He did not look at Michael.

  “That’s better,” Michael said, coaxing Owen to eat. “Better’n cold bread and potatoes, though I’ve made many a meal with less. A man can live off dirt or tree bark if he has to, and I’ve had to more times than I like to remember.” He sat on the floor beside Owen and picked up the knife and slipped it into the sheath strapped to his leg.

  “When it gets dark, you’ll be needin’ to get out to the stream by the house and get some water,” he continued. “It’d be risky now, this close to the road. I wouldn’t expect travelers, but it’s a chance not to be taken.”

  “I saw where they was killed,” Owen said weakly. “There’s blood drops on the floor.”

  Michael nodded gravely. “I know,” he replied quietly. “I saw them, too. When I came in before, I saw them. Made me a bit queasy at first, too, Owen. But it’s nothin’ but spots. Nothin’ but that.”

  “People’ll be thinkin’ I done it now. People’ll think I run away because I done it.”

  “Some, maybe, but not all. Not the doctor, or the sheriff. I was with them all night. They don’t believe it, and it won’t matter what the others think. We’ll be off and gone and I’ll write back later, like I promised, and then everybody’ll know it was me who got you out, and not somethin’ you’d done on your own.”