I said, “You mean he left it and walked the rest of the way.”
“Now I don’t see this is any of your concern.”
I tried to look embarrassed and awkward. “Only, the Sheriff said that Mr. and Mrs. Diggs had come all the way from”—I forgot the name of the town—“from Pennsylvania, and I just thought they’d like some coffee. . . .” I looked at the middle-aged couple sitting beside Donny’s desk. They were both heavyset, with brown hair and pale skin.
Mrs. Diggs spoke up. “Now, that’s real sweet of you, dear.” She had a handkerchief balled up in her hand. Mr. Diggs said thanks. He sounded choked up and sat with his head down.
“Brought some for you too,” I said to Donny, “and Maureen.”
From her desk in the back, Maureen smiled and waved thanks.
“Well, yeah, okay.” Donny helped himself to a cup and took two sugars. “Them doughnuts you got there?”
I handed him the bag. He did not offer it to the Diggses after taking out a chocolate iced one and inspecting it. He grunted a thanks and gave back the bag.
I offered the tray of coffee to the Diggses. They both took a cup and he took a creamer. She just drank hers black and said no thank you to the bag of doughnuts. I guess if your son’s just been murdered, not even a doughnut looks appealing.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, remembering what I’d heard the Sheriff say, “for your loss.”
They both nodded. She pressed the handkerchief to her nose.
The Sheriff would walk in at any minute, and I searched my mind for maybe the one question I wanted answered. But there were too many. How stupid of me not to work this out beforehand. But I hadn’t even known Ralph’s parents were here until fifteen minutes ago.
“Ralph was really nice. Everybody at the hotel liked him a lot. You know he worked at my mother’s hotel for a short while.”
Mrs. Diggs shook her head. “No, we didn’t know anything. Didn’t even know he was going—”
“Now, Mame. No need to talk about that,” said Mr. Diggs. He sounded resentful more than sad.
The door opened and the Sheriff walked in. When he saw me, he stood there and shook his head, but then he went to the Diggses and introduced himself. “I’m Sheriff DeGheyn, Mrs. Diggs, Mr. Diggs. I’m terribly sorry.”
For your loss, I added in my head, in a prompting way.
And he, of course, reading my mind, turned. “Emma?”
I hung my head, but only a bit, as the Sheriff knew I wasn’t the head-hanging type. “Sorry. I just thought—”
Mrs. Diggs came to my rescue. “This here’s one nice little girl, Sheriff. She brought us coffee and doughnuts. It was real sweet.”
I kind of scuffed my shoe on the floor, but stopped, as he also knew I wasn’t a shoe scuffer. I scratched my ear. I didn’t look at him. “Well, it’s just they had this long drive. . . .”
Donny was standing there now. “Thought you told her to bring the stuff over, Sam. That’s what she said.”
“I did not say any such thing!” I paused and turned to the Diggses. “Oh, I’m so sorry to be fussing at such a bad time for you.”
I cast Donny what I think is called a “baleful look.”
The Sheriff said, “That’s very nice of you, Emma, to be so concerned. But we have a very sad undertaking here, so maybe we’ll see you later.”
He actually smiled. I could not read the smile. But I kept looking at it as I passed through the door.
61
“TRAGEDY TOWN.” Sitting at one of the tables in the Abigail Butte County Library, I set down that title with as heavy a hand as I could, pressing hard with my pencil, thickening up the letters until I nearly tore the paper.
I spent some moments doing this, as I didn’t know what was to follow. Why not? Hadn’t I just shown the last thing I’d written to Mr. Gumbrel a few days ago? What was it with writing? Did there have to be this feeling you were just born ten minutes ago and didn’t even know that pages had writing on them? That you weren’t supposed to write on air with your fingertip the way real babies did?
I put my head in my hands. It wasn’t that I didn’t know what I wanted to write about; there was plenty of it in my head. I just didn’t seem able to begin, despite that.
I heard a car stop suddenly out on the road, its tires screeching as if to avoid running into something. I hoped Ree-Jane was crossing the street.
I slid down in my chair and stared up at the slow-moving ceiling fan on which a couple of flies were riding as if it were a fly merry-go-round. Then I forced myself to sit up and look at my page.
TRAGEDY TOWN: There was music. There was moonlight. There was dancing.
I wished I hadn’t already written that so I could write it now.
There was music. There was moonlight.
Maybe I could continue with that line about families that I’d thought I read or heard somewhere. I wrote down: “All families are unhappy.” No. That was too obvious for anyone to bother writing down. “All families are happy or unhappy.” No. “All families are unhappy, but differently.” That was okay, but somebody had already written it. But if another writer had written this, I couldn’t use it, not because it would be dishonest, but because somebody would probably recognize it and write a letter to the editor.
So I decided to ask Miss Babbit and took the page up to the desk where she was stamping cards.
“Hello, Emma.”
“Hello.” I told her my problem and read her the line.
Miss Babbit looked a little perplexed, then told me to follow her, and we walked into the fiction shelves. She knew, I think, every book in the library, for it took her exactly one minute back there to find the book she wanted. I considered becoming a librarian. You really knew what you were doing if you were one.
The book she was holding was pretty thick; I read the title on the back: Anna K—Her finger was over part of the name. She read: “ ‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ It’s by Tolstoy.”
I’d heard of him. I think he was one of the Russians. They were all crazy. “I guess that line is pretty famous, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “Of course, you could use it, Emma. Just put quotes around it.”
I wasn’t about to give him space in my story. “Thank you, Miss Babbit.”
She returned to the front and I returned to my fate. I plunked down as if the chair were to blame.
And then I recalled what Maud had said about a writer who had a clock on his desk and forced himself to write a certain number of words every fifteen minutes. He just wrote the first thing that came to mind about his story.
Then I would do that. I looked at the big regulator clock on the wall—and picked up my pencil. There was music. There was moonlight. There was dancing. There was a ladder . . . Should I keep the ladder? Or did it kind of spoil the romantic sound of it? I shrugged and went on with the new episode. I thought about Bing Crosby singing “Moonlight Becomes You” to Dorothy Lamour. I gritted my teeth and thought of Morris Slade. I wrote: “He’s charming. He’s rich. He’s in jail—Morris Slade.”
Wow! That wasn’t a bad opening! I went on:Morris Slade was arrested after the body of a young man was found in Brokedown House, out near White’s Bridge Road.
Mr. Butternut, longtime resident, discovered the body, and had this to say:
I could get a quote from Mr. Butternut. He’d love appearing in the paper, and he was probably on his way to being a celebrity. I started in again:I call this story “Tragedy Town” because so many of them have happened around here. Some of this tale has appeared in earlier editions, such as the drowning of Mary-Evelyn Devereau, the murder of Rose Queen over in Cold Flat Junction, the recent murder of her daughter Fern, again near White’s Bridge . . .
Once again, I forgot about me, and sighed, and went back:and the near murder of yours truly, Emma Graham, over at Spirit Lake.
I went on:What you haven’t heard are the details about the disappearance of the Morris Slad
es’ baby from the Belle Ruin Hotel, an alleged kidnapping.
But now we know what happened. . . .
I looked up at the clock: eighteen minutes! I tossed my pencil up in the air, and as it came down I saw the Sheriff up at the front desk, talking to Miss Babbit.
What was he doing here? I didn’t recall ever seeing the Sheriff in the Abigail Butte County Library.
Now he had seen me and was walking over to my table. He pulled out the chair opposite. “Mind?”
“Oh, do you read?” I said.
He smiled, you could say, thinly, a knife smiling. “Come down off your righteousness cloud and listen—”
My what? “I hardly ever think I’m right.” I think I was still on my righteousness cloud, though, because I almost always thought I was right. I recalled what Maud had said: being right can be harder on a person than being wrong. I was still trying to figure out what she meant, exactly.
“How did you know I’d be here?”
“I didn’t. I came to speak to Miss Babbit.”
“Okay, I’m listening.” I said this kind of managing a yawn at the same time. I patted my mouth with my hand.
“Morris Slade wants to talk to you.”
That certainly stopped me in mid-yawn. “What?”
“He won’t talk to anyone but you. Of course, you don’t have to.”
Don’t have to? Was he kidding? I sat there looking serious as if I were really considering. Then, after a few moments of fiddling with my notebook and pencil, I said, solemnly, “Well, all right. If you think it would help.”
62
When Donny brought Morris Slade into the room, I stood up. I don’t know why I did this, for it seemed to be some mark of respect.
The Sheriff yanked me down.
Morris Slade smiled at this little display of temper (mine nice, the Sheriff’s not) and sat down. He looked rumpled and in need of sleep, but otherwise the same.
The Sheriff, who was sitting beside me in this small room he’d told me was for “interviews,” began to ask Morris a question.
Morris Slade kept the smile on his face, but shook his head. “Uhuh, Sheriff DeGheyn. I told you I’d talk only with Emma.”
“I’m not leaving you alone with her.”
“Wait a minute!” I said, popping up again. “That’s for me to say—”
Again, he yanked me down. “You’re twelve, Emma. You don’t get to say.”
Morris Slade cocked an eyebrow. “Do you think she’s in danger? Do you think I’m going to reach across the table and strangle her?”
The Sheriff shook his head briefly. “Not at all. I’m thinking more of a hostage situation.”
Hostage! Me? This would be my second brush with death. I saw it in my mind, a scene where Morris was marching me out of the courthouse, gun at my back, then into his red car. . . . Or was the car still at Brokedown House? Then I noticed both of them were looking at me.
“Don’t look so eager, Emma,” said the Sheriff. “It’s not going to happen.”
“Why did you and Ralph Diggs meet at Brokedown House? That’s way out. Nobody goes there now.” Nobody but me, I should say, and Mr. Butternut.
He looked at me. “That’s why.”
“You mean so nobody would know you were meeting? Or that you knew each other?”
He nodded. “Or so that I’d never be found. Fey said, ‘You can lie here until you rot.’ ”
I sat back hard. I really felt the effort of that, his own son saying that. “That’s terrible.”
The Sheriff put his hand on my arm, but not for comfort. I guess to keep me from talking.
“We’d abandoned him. He’d disappeared. He thought it would be fitting if the same thing happened to me.”
The Sheriff said, “Ben Queen. What about Ben Queen?”
At first he didn’t answer. Then he leaned toward the Sheriff, his arms on the table. “What do you know about Tragedy Town?” His smile was crooked.
I was surprised he remembered and puzzled he was bringing it up.
The Sheriff was puzzled too. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know you don’t.” Morris sat back. “I’ve already told you what happened at that house. I tried to get the gun away from Fey. It went off. Now he’s dead.” Morris wiped his hand across the table, as if he were sweeping crumbs. “I didn’t mean to kill him.”
To me, he looked incredibly sad. Almost to the point of heart-break.
“You don’t believe me,” he said, looking up at the Sheriff.
The Sheriff said nothing and I couldn’t read anything in his expression. I guess he was a really good policeman.
Morris Slade asked if he could smoke.
The Sheriff nodded and shoved the pack of cigarettes toward him, then lit the cigarette with an old Zippo. Maybe he didn’t want Morris reaching into a pocket, or maybe he was just being nice. “Why did he want to kill you, Mr. Slade? Will you tell me that much?”
Morris Slade sat smoking for a few moments, I guess turning that over. The why was a big part of the story. He looked at me, then said, “Because he was angry he’d been abandoned. He was more than angry, he was raging. I certainly can’t blame him for that.”
“You’re—you were his father, is that right?”
He nodded.
“It was really more than abandonment, though. You—or someone—had him kidnapped.”
Again he nodded, then said, “I didn’t know about it. That’s the truth. And that’s all of the story I’ll tell you.” He looked at me again. “I’ll tell Emma the story. I mean, beyond, or before, the shooting. What she can do, if she wants, it’s up to her, is write it up and print it as part of her piece in the paper.”
“If it’s going to be made public, Mr. Slade, why not tell me now?”
“Because you don’t deserve it, Sheriff.”
I was glad to know I was humble enough to be staggered by Morris Slade—or anyone except maybe Maud—talking like this to the Sheriff. But more than that, I thought it was one of the strangest things I’d heard. “. . . don’t deserve it”?
There was a long silence while the two of them regarded each other.
When the Sheriff finally pushed back his chair and said to me, “Emma,” I slowed down leaving by asking the first question that sprang to mind: “Why’d you call him Fey instead of Ralph?”
He smiled. “Because my father’s name was Ralph, and I hated him.”
“Emma,” the Sheriff said again, drawing me forward.
All I could think of was all of the information, the answers, I’d never get. Why did you come here now? Why did Ralph not go after his mother, Imogen? Why did they have him kidnapped? Why did you go to Cold Flat Junction looking for Ben Queen?—And what did it have to do with Rose? That last question, I don’t think I wanted to ask.
When I glanced back over my shoulder at Morris Slade, he looked at that moment as if he were a true inhabitant of Tragedy Town. He seemed to think this was enough; he wanted Ben Queen kept out of it and must not have known that Ben had given himself up.
They were saving each other.
63
The heavy church door closed behind me with a deep sucking sound. I passed down the nave and wondered where I thought I was going. I didn’t know, so I sat down in a pew and looked around. The stained-glass windows were pretty, bright broken pictures, pieces of brilliant blues and reds.
St. Michael’s Church was right behind the courthouse and across the street. I wondered where Father Freeman was and pulled one of the hymnals from the rack and leafed through it, stopping to read now and then. Nothing there could compare with Robert Frost.
I thought I knew why. The hymns were all about hope and victory. Even if the words didn’t appear to be, when the end came around, it was clear the end was about hope and victory, with a big helping of glory thrown in.
Father Freeman came out of a door up there on the side and walked across to the long table where the things for the Catholic service were kept (
you could say) under wraps. He appeared to be rearranging things, candles and chalice and so forth, as if for a dinner party. He made his various bows and scrapes and signs of the cross and I wondered how much of it he believed.
He turned to look out over the absent congregation, probably sensing a presence there, having a priestly turn of mind. He saw me and waved, then disappeared through the doorway again. In another few moments he reappeared, minus the white smock.
“Hi, Emma,” he said, and sat down in the pew before mine and turned to face me. “Did you come to see me?”
“No, to see God, but he’s not around, so you’ll do.”
“Thanks.” He was silent, giving me, I suppose, a chance to speak, but I didn’t.
He said, “I heard about Ralph Diggs. That was terrible. How do you feel about it? I know he worked at the hotel, but was he a friend?”
I shook my head. “Not especially. I felt bad about who they arrested and who’s going to prison for it.”
“You mean Morris Slade?”
“I mean Ben Queen.”
“Oh.” He frowned. “That I hadn’t heard. The Sheriff arrested Ben Queen?”
“He did the shooting, but it was only to keep Morris Slade from getting shot.” I didn’t bother to add my thoughts about the guilty ones going free. I was riffling the pages of the hymnal like Aurora shuffling her pack of cards. I unfolded the piece of paper with the poem on it.
“What are you reading?”
“Poetry and hymns. They don’t have much in common.” I slid the hymnal back behind its strip of wood and folded the paper with the poem into even smaller squares.
“What poetry is it?”
“Robert Frost’s.”
Father Freeman held out his hand as if he had every right to see it. I didn’t give it to him. You don’t deserve it. I think I knew what Morris Slade had meant.
“Well, will you read it, then?”
The way he settled his arms along the back of the pew and settled his eyes on me meant the answer had to be yes.
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