After Eli

by Terry Kay

  He reached for the knife on the floor beside Owen. A drop of blood had splattered like a thick raindrop across the handle. He wiped the handle dry on the left sleeve of his shirt.

  He turned from the body and walked to the bed and methodically smoothed the bedcovering. He then sat on the edge of the bed and took his knife and cut a thin line in his flannel shirt, above the left elbow. He pulled the tip of the blade across his arm, leaving a small slit, like a clean scratch.

  He looked across the room at Owen as the blood seeped down his arm and into his shirt. A sudden confusion pumped in him: Why had he killed Owen? Was it because of Eli’s money? Or was it something in his imagination? Owen was part of a drama that had been written for him from the moment he saw the house where Lester and Mary Caufield lived, and he could not change it. Yes, he thought, that was why. He had killed Owen because it was predestined; it was beyond his control.

  He stood at the bed and crossed the room and gently opened the door with Owen’s body on it. He walked rapidly through the barn, across the yard, and to the house. He stood at the front door kneading his arm, forcing the blood to flow. He lifted his face and listened again for his audience. He could hear nothing. He began kicking at the door with his shoe.

  “Rachel, Rachel,” he screamed. “For God’s sake, Rachel, open the door. I think I’ve killed the boy.”

  * * *

  At the house where Lester and Mary Caufield had been murdered, Tolly Wakefield knelt in the corner of the dark, bare living room and held the bones of the chicken that Owen had eaten. He sniffed the bones as a dog would sniff them and then he walked outside the house and stood on the stoop of the back porch. He had been right about the house and Owen. He could feel a chill, like the presence of an apparition, on his face. But it was not the ghost of Lester or Mary Caufield. Owen Benton was dead. Tolly could feel it.

  19

  TOLLY SAW THE LIGHTS of the Pettit house from a half-mile away, on the road leading back to Deepstep Creek. The lights were two small orange spots on a level line in front of the house. He looked at his pocket watch. It was three o’clock. He had decided against returning to the bridge at Deepstep Creek through the woods; he had no reason to hurry, and the road was easier walked, if longer. He stared at the lights in the house and his head began to ache again with the premonition of Owen’s death.

  “Dammit,” he muttered.

  He reached the house quickly. Through the front window, he saw Michael sitting forward in a chair, his head bowed. Rachel and Dora, wearing heavy gowns, stood near him. Sarah sat in the rocker, near the fireplace. She sat very erect, not moving. Tolly could not see her face, only her body.

  He looked around the yard and saw the opened barn door. He stepped to the porch of the house.

  “Rachel,” he called.

  He saw the figures in the house stiffen as their faces whipped toward the window and the voice.

  “Rachel, it’s Tolly Wakefield,” he said in a strong voice.

  He saw Michael move from his chair and to the door. The door opened and Michael stepped onto the porch, followed by Rachel and Dora.

  “It’s good you’re here,” Michael said seriously. “I—I’ve killed the Benton boy.”

  Tolly stared at Michael and then moved his eyes to Rachel’s face.

  “I had to do it,” Michael said. “He come at me with the knife and I had the pitchfork I was mending. He was ravin’. I did my best to talk him down. I couldn’t.”

  Tolly’s eyes drifted to Dora and then beyond her to Sarah, who was standing inside the doorway.

  “He’s in the barn, Tolly,” Dora told him. “In the room.” She added, “I looked. He’s dead.”

  Tolly turned and walked to the barn. He stood for a moment at the door, listening. He heard a rat sprint across a rafter. He stepped into the barn’s darkness and struck a match and saw the room, with the door closed. He moved cautiously to the door and pushed it gently open, and he could feel the weight of Owen’s body on the door and hear Owen’s feet drag lightly across the floor.

  He stepped into the room and struck a fresh match and stood looking at Owen’s body, hanging like a grotesque ornament, and thought of the chill that had engulfed him on the back porch of the Caufield house. His eyes circled the room and he saw the candle and lit it and placed it on the stove, and then he removed Owen’s body from the door and stretched it across the floor and pulled a blanket from the bed and covered the body.

  He blew out the candle and stepped through the opened door and walked from the barn to the house, where Michael and Rachel and Dora waited for him on the porch.

  “I’ll go to town,” Tolly said. “Bring back the doctor and sheriff.”

  “That’d be helpful,” replied Michael. “I was about to do the same, but it’s left me heartsick, what I done. I wish you’d found him instead of me in the woods today. He’d be alive now. I trusted him, Tolly. It almost cost me. I still find it hard to believe.”

  Tolly did not reply. He stared at Michael’s bandaged left arm and the hunter’s instinct tightened in his chest.

  “Sarah?” he asked. “She all right?”

  “Upset, but all right,” Rachel answered softly, looking back at Sarah.

  Tolly nodded.

  “Don’t go back to the barn,” he said. “Leave it for the sheriff.”

  He turned and walked hurriedly away.

  * * *

  Owen’s body was taken from the barn at sunrise. It was wrapped in blankets and placed across the back seat of Garnett Cannon’s car and Garnett began his slow drive into Yale.

  No one had seen it happen, but Garnett had walked behind the barn after viewing the body and he had vomited. It was the first time he had ever become ill in the presence of death and he knew it was because Michael had told a horrifying account of the demon that had raged in Owen like a terrible madness.

  It was not possible, Garnett told himself. He had tended the boy, talked with him, examined him with care. If there had been a demon in Owen, Garnett would have felt it with his fingers. He trusted what his fingers told him and they had discovered nothing in Owen but the trembling of a battered child.

  Yet the Irishman had known Owen well—perhaps better than any of them. The Irishman had coaxed him from his coma of silence, and had defended him before his own father. The Irishman had trusted Owen on the night that he escaped, and had urged his safe return, and there were the other considerations: the knife and the report of Owen’s preoccupation with the legend of Eli’s money, and the details of Owen appearing at the barn, vowing to bleed the truth of the money from Rachel. There was the cut on Michael’s arm—a swiping cut, not deep, no need for stitches—and the anguish of Michael’s remorse as he wept unashamedly over the tragedy of his act. All of it was evidence that Michael was right, that a madness had possessed Owen.

  Garnett drove slowly, easing his car over the hard ruts of the road. If only Tolly had been there earlier, he thought. Tolly might have seen Owen going into the barn. Tolly might have stopped it. But that would have been ironic, a one-in-a-million chance, Tolly being there. At least he had been right: Owen did not go south, as Michael had described. Or he had circled back. And, Christ, he had had the nerve to hide in the house where Lester and Mary Caufield had been murdered. That alone was an indictment of his guilt. There was a demon in Owen, Garnett thought. A demon that had slipped from the thrusts of his fingers with the teasing facility of a matador. If only Tolly had been earlier. But the fact was that he hadn’t. By the time Tolly arrived, Owen had been dead an hour or longer. There was nothing he could do, he had said, and it was a simple, sensible explanation, and Tolly had said nothing more about it. Still, Garnett wondered if Tolly knew something he would not tell until he was alone with the sheriff. He had remained solemnly quiet during Curtis’s questioning of Michael. If so—if Tolly did know more than he told—Curtis would soon hear it: The two men had left for Frank Benton’s house to deliver the news of Owen’s death.

  Garnett realized he
was perspiring and his mouth was dry. He was deeply depressed. He tried to dismiss the sight that Tolly had described: Owen pinned to the door with a pitchfork driven through his throat and into the wood with enough force to hold the slender body. The prongs of the fork had penetrated the trachea and punctured the carotid artery, but Garnett was not convinced Owen had died from the wound. It could have been the trauma of a shock that had locked his heart in mid-stroke. But however Owen had died, it was brutal.

  He looked over his shoulder at the wrapped body. It was such a tiny bundle to contain a man.

  “Goddamnit,” he muttered aloud. He beat against the steering wheel with the heel of his hand and looked at the mountains around him. The early sun feathered across the valley. It would soon be autumn, he thought. The mountains were beautiful in autumn. Colors that boiled and spilled like brilliant rivers pouring into the funnel of the valley. He loved the mountains, but he needed to be away from them. He needed to renew himself in a great city like New York or Boston. He needed to hear the music of an opera, dine in a fine restaurant, speak with other doctors about medicine—medicine, not patchwork mending. He needed to sleep with a woman who had soft, perfumed skin. He had been too long in the mountains and he needed to be away from them. But he knew he could not leave them before autumn.

  * * *

  Owen was buried the following morning, on Wednesday, in graveside services attended only by his family, the old minister, the doctor, the sheriff, and, because the sheriff had insisted, by Tolly Wakefield. There was no sermon, no praise of Owen’s life, no attempt to invoke God’s mercy. Frank Benton’s vision had been confirmed: His son was a murderer. He would serve his agony in Hell. God would not listen to lies about the good of Owen’s life. God would not be merciful. The old minister read Scripture, hurriedly, almost in shame, and Owen’s coffin was lowered into the grave. The minister pronounced a prayer to benefit Frank and his children. Frank said nothing during the service. There was no emotion in his face. None of the children cried. It was as though they had been drugged. Garnett knew what had happened: Their father had preached the power of his vision to them, and they had believed him. Garnett could not have understood them when he first arrived in Yale; now he did, and he knew they had retreated into a silence that was as killing as a lobotomy. Owen’s name would never again be mentioned in the Benton family.

  * * *

  A calm settled over Yale and the Naheela Valley after Owen’s funeral. Yes, it was tragic that he had died as he did, but it was also just. He had murdered Lester and Mary and had tried to hide it, but Good and Right—those twin soldiers of the inevitable—had trapped him. Eye for an eye. God’s law. Irrefutable. Hard as a rock. Just as God had revealed the truth to Frank Benton, God had made it impossible for Owen to escape the punishment of his act. Too bad about the Irishman. He had believed in the boy. God knows, he had. He had convinced the entire valley that Owen was innocent, and then Owen turned on him. Lucky the pitchfork was in his room for repairs. It might have been different. The Irishman might have been the one dead.

  But it was over. The valley was safe again. And the Irishman was the man to thank for it.

  * * *

  On Monday, a week after he had killed Owen Benton, Michael appeared in Garnett’s office. His eyes were puffed and he seemed deeply morose. He had not slept well, he said. He could not sleep, though he had moved from the barn into the house. Rachel had insisted on it, because there would be ghosts for him in the barn. She and Sarah and Dora had taken the bed from the barn and set it in the living room. They had comforted him in every way they could, assuring him that Owen’s death was not his fault. And he had tried to believe them, but still he had not slept. He had not worked on the fence. He had sat and relived Owen’s death, fragment by fragment, word by word. He could not erase Owen from the gallery of faces in his memory, he told Garnett. He did not mean the demon Owen. No. He meant the boy Owen, the Owen who had listened to his stories and songs, who had smiled shyly at his frivolities in the jail. He had wanted to attend the funeral, he confessed, but he did not, because the ceremony would have been a ceremony of pain. He had wanted to go to Frank Benton and ask forgiveness, but he knew Frank Benton’s mind was sealed with his sense of triumph, and his words would be wasted, like a song for the deaf.

  “It’s been a Hell, sure enough,” he said quietly. “I’ve had scrapes, Doc. Too many of them, I’m sorry to say. And there’s been broken bones and blood, but I’ve never killed a man. Never. And the sad thing is, it wasn’t a man I killed; it was a boy. But I can’t fault him. Not the boy. It wasn’t him that came to the barn; it was a madman. Somethin’ took him over, sure as God. Sure as God, Doc.”

  “You know that, then live with it,” advised Garnett. “There’s enough voodoo in the world. Don’t let it haunt you.”

  Michael paced the floor in Garnett’s office. He squeezed his hands together and nodded agreement.

  “You’re right,” he said, “but if it was easy done, I’d be out with the lads—Teague was by the farm, askin’ me—and I’d be celebratin’.” He rubbed his eyes with the knuckles of his hands and then combed his fingers through his hair. “It’s not easy done, Doc,” he whispered. “Not in the least. Not with loose ends floatin’ around in my mind like balloons.”

  “Such as?”

  Michael faced the doctor.

  “Whether or not people believe me in what happened.”

  Garnett pushed his swivel chair away from his desk with his feet.

  “What makes you think that?” he asked.

  “No reason,” Michael replied. “Just somethin’ I feel.”

  “Who from?”

  Michael shrugged.

  “Well, Doc, you, for one,” he confessed. “I keep gettin’ the feelin’ you want to say somethin’, but you don’t. I felt it that night at the farm.”

  Garnett leaned back in his chair and propped his feet on the edge of his desk. A frown of concern crossed his face and he stared at his shoes.

  “No questions,” he said after a moment. “I guess I’ve wondered why you couldn’t disarm the boy, weak as he was, without having to kill him.”

  “He had the knife, Doc.”

  Garnett nodded thoughtfully.

  “He did, yes,” he said. “But I keep seeing what you did to Teague that night at Pullen’s.”

  “I tried to talk the boy out of it, Doc,” Michael replied earnestly. “I tried. But when he came at me with the knife, I had to do what I did. I had to.”

  Garnett locked his hands behind his neck. He began to rock slowly in his chair and the chair squawked in a heavy, dull rhythm.

  “Well, forget it,” he said. “I don’t doubt you. Guess I just wish it could’ve been prevented.” He laughed cynically. “Hell, if I’m the only one you’ve got to worry about, Irishman, you could be out in the middle of the street dancing one of your gaudy Irish jigs, or whatever it is you people do. You should know by now that nobody around listens to me, unless they’re dying and I’m the only person around who looks halfway intelligent.”

  “There’s Tolly Wakefield,” Michael said deliberately.

  Garnett stopped his rocking. He looked quizzically at Michael.

  “Tolly?” he asked.

  “Past couple of days I’ve seen him up in the woods, across the road from the farm. Just standing in the edge of the woods, watchin’ the house.”

  “Tolly? You sure?”

  Michael nodded.

  “It’s almost as though he wanted me to see him,” he said.

  “If you saw him, you’re damn right it’s because he wanted you to,” Garnett replied. He dropped his feet from his desk and pulled his chair forward. “I don’t know what he’s doing, but I’ll ask Curtis. Maybe he knows.”

  “No need,” Michael told him. “I don’t know why he’d be there, but it’s no bother to me. I think he’s still upset about me bein’ in the woods, lookin’ for Owen.”

  “Could be,” agreed Garnett. “Tolly’s a stubborn man. Fro
m what people say, he doesn’t like for anything to get the best of him. I remember when the Caufields were killed, he could find only one sign and that was a step going into that little branch beside the house. He thought someone had been in the barn, but he wasn’t sure. Anyway, he spent days out in the woods, but it rained a lot a day or so after he started looking and if anything was there, it washed away. Forget Tolly. He’s that way.”

  Michael thought of Tolly in the woods in March, chasing him.

  “If he’s got suspicions, I wish he’d say it out,” Michael said.

  “He will,” promised Garnett. “Don’t worry about it. Come on, I’ll give you a ride back to the farm. You need to quit brooding. Get out. Do some work. Finish that damned fence, before even I start to thinking you’re blood kin to Eli, like the rest of the people around here.”

  Michael laughed easily.

  “I will, Doc. I will. Talkin’ it out helps,” he said.

  * * *

  In the afternoon, after Garnett had driven him back to the farm, Michael began work on the fence. The last push, he called it. One last section to tie it together and then the cows could be turned to graze. And it would be done without interfering, he declared enthusiastically. Sarah would watch over the cows above the house, Dora would help him set the posts, Rachel would stay at the quilting.

  “Can’t stop everythin’ for a couple of strands of wire,” he told Rachel. “You do the quiltin’. Winter’ll be here before you know it.”

  * * *

  Rachel stood at the window in Dora’s room and watched the work in the field. She did not know what had happened during Michael’s visit with the doctor, and she had not asked. If he wanted to tell her, he would, in his time. It did not matter. He was at last relaxed. The gloom that had shadowed him since Owen’s death was gone. His eyes were again bright and the lilt, the song, was again in his voice. His whistling had filled the house and he had remembered stories of the circus that were grander even than the performances of those nomadic people. He talked of the fence with an obsessed eagerness. The fence would be his triumph over the tragedy of the summer; it would be a finished thing, something to mark his presence. And he would not be like other men of the valley, spending his energy and time in Pullen’s. He had had enough of the daily trips into Yale, he said. And he did not want to hear the questions that would surely be asked of him.