Cold moon over Babylon

by Michael McDowell

  “What?” demanded the sheriff peaceably: “You mean you cain’t find her? Margaret is what—one year, two years, behind Belinda in the school?”

  “Margaret didn’t come home last night,” said Jerry. “She was at the high school yesterday, helping Mr. Perry grade some papers. She left there on her bicycle and she never came home”

  “D’you call Warren?” asked the sheriff. Warren Perry rented out the tiny apartment above the garage in the backyard of the sheriff’s house.

  “I called this morning,” replied Jerry. “He saw her ride off on her bicycle, a little while before the rain started. I called some of her friends, but they hadn't seen her either.” Jerry thought it best to let the sheriff imagine that they had already made extensive inquiry.

  “Well,” said the sheriff thoughtfully, “weren't the lines down out at your place last night?”

  Evelyn nodded: “Of course. Margaret would've called if she could have. The lines were back up this morning, and she didn't call. Something happened to her. We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t think something had happened to her.”

  “What you think could have happened?” asked the sheriff. “It’s about two miles from the school out to your place. On a bike that’s not more than fifteen minutes, and that’s with stopping for a drink of water and an ice cream cone to boot. And there’s nowhere to get an ice cream cone or a drink of water from the high school out to your place. In fact, there’s not much of anything there.”

  “That’s why we came to you!” cried Evelyn: “ ’cause we don’t know! She left the school, and she didn’t come home! She’s not with any of her friends, so where is she?” Evelyn cast her hand over her mouth, trying to keep from tears.

  “Well,” said the sheriff, “maybe somebody saw her. Ed Geiger goes fishing out at your bridge. He was there yesterday, came back just before the lightning started. I spoke to him and he didn’t say a thing then about seeing Margaret, though even if he had, I don’t know why he would tell me about it. Belinda didn’t say nothing about seeing Margaret either, when she was coming back from your place yesterday evening.”

  Evelyn nodded: “We thought it might be Margaret coming up, but it was Belinda. I wish Margaret had been with her…”

  Hale turned in his chair a little, and brushed the crumbs out of his lap onto the floor. Quietly he suggested: “Maybe Margaret didn’t plan on coming home.”

  Where else would she go?” Evelyn demanded. “She knew I was fixing supper for her.”

  Jerry saw what the sheriff was after, and tried to think of a way to head him off before he upset his grandmother further. But before he could, Hale went on: “Maybe she just...went off.”

  “On a wheel!” cried Evelyn.

  “Girls sometimes just...go off. Not thinking, that’s all. And they just...go off. Sometimes they go off by themselves, sometimes they go off...with somebody.”

  Excitedly, Evelyn protested: “What are you talking about?! Margaret doesn’t run off! She’s only fourteen. Where would she go off to? Who would she go off with?”

  Hale backed down when he saw that Evelyn didn’t— or didn’t want to—understand. “It was just an idea, just an idea. He stood. “We’ll find Margaret. She was on a bicycle, she’s around. Probably still in Babylon.”

  Sharply Evelyn cried: “You know where she is! Where is she?!”

  Hale threw up his hands: “ ’Course I don’t know where she is, Miz Larkin. I mean, she just couldn’t have gotten far on a bicycle, in the middle of a storm like we had last night.”

  “Maybe,” suggested Jerry softly, “maybe she had an accident.”

  “If she had, somebody would have reported it. We’re not out in the middle of the wilderness. If Margaret had stayed on the road, and had an accident, then somebody would have found her and taken care of her. I’m gone look of course, but you got to do two things for me, Jerry...”

  “Anything!” cried Evelyn: “He’ll do anything you want him to. I couldn’t sleep, sheriff, last night I didn’t close my eyes...”

  “What you want us to do?” asked Jerry, riding over his grandmother’s complaint.

  “Jerry, first thing I want you to do, is take Miz Larkin home, and Miz Larkin, you stay there—”

  “I cain’t, sheriff, I got to help look for my little girl.”

  “You got to stay there, in case she comes back, in case she calls,” said the sheriff calmly. “And that's that, Miz Larkin.”

  “What else?” said Jerry.

  “Bring me back in a picture of Margaret. The one that went in the yearbook’ll be fine.”

  “You know what Margaret looked like, sheriff!” protested Evelyn.

  “I know Margaret, sure, Miz Larkin, but maybe all the men out there don't know her, and I want them to know who they’re looking for.” In a lower voice, he added: “And if for some reason we don’t find her, we’ll send the picture to Tallahassee to the highway patrol. We just need it for our records...”

  “Records!” exclaimed Evelyn, with less control: “How many people are missing in Babylon that you got to keep records on ’em?”

  Hale shook his head, and was thinking of how to get Evelyn Larkin out of the office, when the door opened once more, after a sharp familiar rap on the frosted glass.

  Belinda Hale, in her cheerleader outfit and swinging her gold and black pompoms in a wide arc, leapt into the room. “Daddy,” she cried: “I just came by to tell you that we are having an emergency cheerleader practice this morning, and—”

  She broke off, and greeted Evelyn and Jerry with some small surprise. She could see that Evelyn Larkin was upset, and looked to her father questioningly.

  “Listen, honey,” said Hale, “when you were coming back from Miz Larkin’s yesterday, did you pass Margaret on her bike?”

  Belinda shock her head, with great solemnity and pursed lips. “I surely did not,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “Why? Did something happen to Margaret?”

  Evelyn looked away. Jerry cast down his eyes. Hale shook his head slowly, an indication that Belinda should not renew the question. She licked her lips and rolled her eyes. Already backing slowly out of the room, she said with a brittle smile: “Daddy, I got to run, or I’m gone be late. Good to see you again, Miz Larkin, Jerry...”

  After she left, Hale turned to Jerry and Evelyn: Belinda won’t say anything to anybody. She knows better. She’s got a mouth, but she’s also got a zipper to fit it.”

  Evelyn shook her head distractedly: What did anything else matter but Margaret’s safety and return?

  “Look,” said Hale, glad that Evelyn had calmed down from her near-hysteria: “We don’t even really know if Margaret is missing yet. Maybe she overslept at somebody’s house. Maybe she’s home now. You go back out there and see. If she’s not there, give me a call back here. Tell Neal, and he’ll tell me. I'm gone ride out your way, and see who’s out there, and just see if anybody saw Margaret riding by...”

  Evelyn nodded tearfully, and Jerry led her toward the door. There, Evelyn turned, and wiping the moisture from her eyes, said in a voice that Hale had to stand still to hear: “Sheriff, I love my little girl like you love yours.

  You find her for me. You promise me you’ll find her.” “We’ll find her,” said Hale, and turned away. Glancing out the window, he saw Belinda waving to him from the corner of the rattlesnake pen. Behind him the frosted glass rattled as the office door was pulled shut.

  Chapter 8

  After leaving the sheriff’s office in the Babylon town hall, Evelyn wanted Jerry to take her directly home, but Jerry argued against this. “No, Grandma,” he said carefully and firmly, “we ought to go by the bank first. I’ve got a hundred dollars, maybe just a little more, in my savings account, and I’m gone take it out today. If there’s any berries left after last night, I’m gone have to pay the Scouts when they start, coming out on Monday. And we got to buy groceries this weekend too. We’re almost out of gas, and since Texaco took their card back we got to pay for it in cash.”<
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  Evelyn shook her head in amazement: “Jerry, we don’t have one idea in the world where Margaret is, and you are thinking about Scouts and gasoline credit cards?!”

  “I’m thinking about those things ’cause I know Margaret’ll be back. She’s not lost—we just don’t know where she is right now. I’d have to come back into town later anyway to go to the bank, and I'd just as soon do it now.” His real motive, entirely unselfish, was not to leave Evelyn alone on the farm, when she was in doubt about Margaret.

  “Well cried Evelyn hastily, “let’s go right now. The sooner we’re done, the sooner we can get back out to the house. What if the phone is ringing right now? Jerry, I. couldn't forgive myself if I thought that I was missing Margaret’s call.”

  “If Margaret’s calling now, she’ll call back.”

  “What if she was kidnapped?” whispered Evelyn, and clutched Jerry's arm. They crossed the street blindly to the Citizens, Planters and Merchants Bank.

  Jerry laughed hoarsely: “And what do they want for ransom: eight thousand pints of blueberries?”

  While Jerry stood in line at the teller’s window, Evelyn sat nervously on a leather couch in an alcove at the front of the bank. Several comfortable chairs were arranged about a low round table covered with magazines. A newly installed plate glass window looked out onto John Glenn Avenue. This had been called Main Street since the town was founded, but an emergency session of the town council had changed the name after the astronaut first circled the earth.

  The bank had been built just before World War I, and the principal fixtures were handsomely carved of dark wood. But over the years the effect had been spoiled by the addition of common steel desks and other cheap furnishings. James Redfield, before the retirement forced on him by his automobile accident, had made plans to erect a new building. His son Nathan looked to follow through on his father’s wishes, but not so quickly as James Redfield would have pursued them. Nathan didn’t care much one way or the other what happened to the bank, as long as his salary continued to increase each year. The stock of the bank was owned almost entirely by his father, and Nathan as yet received none of the dividends.

  The desks of the four officers of the bank were set behind a low mahogany railing. Nathan Redfield usually arrived at the bank about the time it opened, though he rarely remained until closing; he was forgiven this lack of conscientiousness because he was the acting president, because he stood to inherit the whole thing, and because there was nothing Nathan could do short of embezzling directly out of the teller’s drawer that wouldn’t still show him off to advantage against Ben.

  The combination of Nathan’s uncommon languid handsomeness and his father’s money made it universally wondered at that he had never taken a wife. When it was brought up to him, Nathan said only that he would “wait till next June, and then they’d see a wedding...”

  Or, if June were inconveniently close, he’d say, “I’m seeing someone in Mobile just now, and we’ll just wait and see what comes of that.” Some people he gave to believe that he was keeping company with a woman in the midst of divorce proceedings, and for her sake had to keep the liaison secret. Others he told he had just that week put his order in at the Sears catalog store, and was awaiting delivery of the perfect spouse. In short, Nathan had such a line of tales and evasions that people didn’t know what to think, and all the gossip was contradictory. Other men in town Nathan’s age were married fathers, and they prodded Nathan to tell them of his sexual exploits in Mobile and Pensacola, but Nathan disappointed them altogether, or his stories were too vague to satisfy their prurience.

  It was certain, however, that no woman from Babylon was suited to Nathan. Six years before, it had been thought that he would choose one of the two prettiest women in town. Both of these had had their hopes, and maintained a friendly rivalry. Both were disappointed. The younger married the manager of the shirt factory up in Brewton, and the other went long in. the tooth. Nathan flirted with the peroxided widow who fended bar at the Lost Ways Inn on the Mobile highway, but they had never been seen together outside the bar; in any case it was not thinkable that Nathan would introduce such a woman to James Redfield as his future daughter- in-law.

  There was strangely no scandal about Nathan Redfield, though it was odd that he was a bachelor. Only the dimwitted and homosexuals—of the latter there were two in Babylon, who lived next door to one another, and taught grammar school—remained unmarried at so advanced an age as thirty-three.

  Mirabelle Hightower, a young Creek girl from the north side of town, became pregnant in junior high school; it was supposed in the Indian community that Nathan Redfield was the father. But the girl was run, down on the highway in the fifth month of her pregnancy; and the question of paternity became irrelevant In any case the story had never circulated widely.

  Nathan could call almost all of Babylon by its first name, but had few friends. Those closest to him were the other officers of the bank and the sheriff, men with whom he sometimes hunted, or played dominoes, or got drunk. But most of Nathan’s pleasures were solitary: He swam a great deal, which allowed him to keep his figure, and he spent many afternoons at the dog track in Cantonment, twenty miles distant. And, it was considered that Nathan was performing an invaluable service to the community by keeping a rein on his little brother, who wasn't fit to barb wire. Ben might be. unmanageable if Nathan married. But after twelve years of speculation about what Nathan Redfield was really like, without coming to much of a conclusion, Babylon gave it all over with the easy formula: Nathan Redfield pretty much keeps himself to himself...

  This Friday morning, Nathan sat in his creaking swivel chair, with his feet propped gracefully on the corner of his desk. He leafed idly through a dog-eared copy of Field & Stream. He was dressed in a light blue shirt, with a wide blue striped tie that had been loosened at the collar before he even arrived at the bank. Hair at his throat was dark and thick. His blue cotton pants had been immaculately cleaned and pressed by Nina. Her care for Nathan’s wardrobe was a kind of sarcasm, for she never tried to hide her distaste for the man himself.

  Over the top of the magazine, Nathan cast a perfunctory eye at the uncrowded room, and caught sight of Jerry Larkin. He looked around more attentively then, stared a few moments at the alcove in the front of the bank, and presently rose with the magazine rolled tightly in his fist.

  He moved casually through the small wooden gate and toward the alcove, as if to return the periodical to the table before the plate glass window. He tossed it onto a pile of others, and glanced at the old woman sitting on the couch.

  “Oh hey, Miz Larkin, how you?” said Nathan, with an affable smile of surprise.

  “Nathan, I’m fine, how you?” answered Evelyn automatically. Even if she had thought, she would not have replied any other way, for she had no wish for the town to know that Margaret was missing. But her distracted manner and thick voice betrayed her disquiet.

  “Miz Larkin, I was hoping you were coming in today, because I have been meaning to talk to you. Jerry’s gone be a minute at the window, he came in right behind the Western Auto deposit, and that woman they got over there never gets it right.”

  He sat beside her on the couch, and leaned forward a little to speak to her over the loud whirr of the air-conditioning unit just above them.

  “Nathan?” said Evelyn cautiously, “what you want to talk to me about—you want to talk about that loan...?”

  He nodded slowly.

  Evelyn looked around panicked for Jerry. He stood impatiently in the line, and was not looking in her direction. She tried to gather her wits: “Nathan, please let's don't talk right now. This is a bad time for me to try to talk about something like this. Something happened this morning, and I just—”

  “Well, Miz Larkin,” protested Nathan, with a small smile and a becoming incline of his head, “I hate to say it, but we just got to talk. Now you know you have been behind on these payments since last October, sometimes a week, sometimes two weeks, some
times longer than that. We’ve been over this before, you and me. Sometimes you pay what you owe, but most times you don’t. You’re already ten days behind on May, and we’re not even gone talk about April, and Belinda Hale told my daddy that you weren’t even going to start to pick your berries until Monday. So I don’t s’pose Jerry is standing in line to put money in, is he? Because if he’s standing there waiting in line to make a payment on his loan, I’ll go over and shake his hand…”

  Evelyn shook her head miserably: “Nathan, please let us come back next week, and well talk it over then. I don’t know what Jerry is doing. We don’t have the money yet, and I cain’t think. I just cain’t think when—” She looked away, not daring to complete her excuse.

  “When what?” prompted Nathan.

  Evelyn began to tremble uncontrollably, and couldn’t speak at once: “Nathan, nothing...” she faltered.

  “We cain’t wait till the season’s over, Miz Larkin, and I cain’t imagine that the kind of rain we had last night did your berries much good.”

  “No, it—”

  “And,” continued Nathan, paying no attention to the wild manner in which she twisted her head about: “As acting president of the CP&M, I got to make sure that you’ve made provision to keep up with your payments on that loan. It was a large loan, and there was some question of giving it to you. You default on that loan, Miz Larkin, and you don’t just lose your credit rating, you lose the whole kit and caboodle...”

  “Jerry! Jerry!” cried out Evelyn. She had lost the meaning of Nathan's words as he continued mercilessly about the loan payments, and since Jerry had still not appeared to aid her, she called out for him, unmindful of what other customers in the bank would think of her outburst.

  When Jerry had finished his transaction at the teller's window, he thrust the bills and the passbook into his back pocket, and hurried to his grandmother. He glanced suspiciously at Nathan.