The Frightened Ones

by Melba Marlett

  “Do you know where we are?” he asked fiercely. “Have any idea?”

  “No.”

  “I’m going to take a quick look around. They might be bluffing, themselves.” He got out, dropping the keys into his pocket. “Stay here if you know what’s good for you. I won’t be far away. If I have to run after you and bring you back—” He fingered a second, and she knew that he was debating whether it would be safer to destroy her now. But she was a woman and he had another use for her, when he got around to it. A man he would have killed on the spot.

  He moved away and she lost sight of him immediately in the thick darkness. Her hand crept to the door handle, and she waited. A sixth sense must have warned her that the time was not yet, because she did not hear him return until he was right beside her. “Just checking up,” he said threateningly, and went away again.

  This time she didn’t wait. She pressed the handle softly and was free, running across the field, dodging behind the com shocks, going away from the road toward the farm-house that must be somewhere ahead. He was after her, almost from the start. She heard him swear and stumble, and once, when he circled ahead to cut her off, she almost ran into him. She threw herself on the ground and he passed within a yard of her without knowing it.

  She never knew when he got into the car and drove away. It may have been during one of the periods when she was having a vomiting attack, pressing her face against a com shock to stifle the sound of retching. Between the nausea and the listening, it took her an hour to reach the lighted space near a barn where a man in overalls was working on a tractor motor. “May I use your telephone?” she said to him, and fell on her knees from sheer inability to stand any longer.

  Their name was Benson, and they were very kind. Mr. Benson did the telephoning, first to the state police and then to Ella’s mother. “No, she’s all right, ma’am. The police are coming out to talk to her and they’ll drive her home. She’s been a mighty brave girl, I’d say. Mighty brave.” Mrs. Benson fed her a lavish supper and sponged her stained coat into respectability, marveling, “My goodness, I don’t know how you lived through it! I wouldn’t have had the nerve!”

  “It isn’t hard to have the nerve when you know you’re going to be killed anyway.” A thought struck her and she paused, her fork halfway to her mouth. “But—you always are going to die anyway, aren’t you?” she said slowly. “Eventually, I mean.”

  “Well, everybody dies, if that’s what you’re talking about,” said Mrs. Benson, puzzled. “But as for man, his days are as the grass,’ you know.” She smiled consolingly. “You’re young. You have a long time ahead of you, never fear.”

  The police were kind too. Lieutenant Harris said that her mother was probably anxious to see her and they’d better do their talking while they drove. So at sixty miles an hour she answered a hundred questions, and Sergeant Connors, in the back seat, jotted down the answers. Finally she put a question of her own: “Who was he?”

  “His name’s Jake Norris. Escaped from the Prison Farm this afternoon. Supposed to be doing ten years at hard labor. He’s a bad customer, miss. You’re lucky.”

  “I think he was going to kill me.”

  “Murder, robbery, rape, he’s done ’em all. The only conviction we could make stick in this state was assault with intent to kill. We sent him up for that.” He turned his head slightly and spoke to the sergeant. “If he’s heading for Wentworth, he must mean to catch a train to Chicago.”

  “Could be. That’s his old stamping ground, the files said.”

  “We’ll have to head him off. Once he’s in Chicago, he’ll be mighty hard to find.”

  They let her off by the walk that led to the porch, and her mother came running down the steps, reaching out grateful arms to her. “Thank God, Ella. I’ve been so worried. Are you really all right? You aren’t hurt?”

  “I’m fine, Mom.”

  “Your father’s kinda upset. You know how he gets. Don’t pay any attention to what he says. He—”

  “You’ll catch cold,” Ella said calmly. “Let’s go in.”

  The children were waiting for her just inside the door, and she hugged them, smiling to show that she was unharmed. Then she walked across the room to where Gus stood, red-faced and glowering.

  “I’m sorry about your car,” she said. “The police think they’ll get it back for you.”

  “Stoppin’ to pick up strangers!” he bellowed. “After all you’ve been told! I ought to—”

  “Oh, keep quiet a minute,” she said impatiently.

  Gus’s jaw dropped. In the sudden stillness she heard her mother gasp, saw the grin on her oldest brother’s face. The resolution that had been forming in her mind crystallized, rock-hard.

  “I’m leaving here tonight,” she told him. “I’m going in to stay with Miss Lewis for a few days. Until she can get me into the Nurses’ Training School at St. Luke’s. I’m going to learn to be a nurse.”

  Gus recovered and started for her, hand upraised. “I’ll learn you to talk to me like that, you little snip! I’ll—”

  She did not retreat a step. A bright mounting anger threw color into her cheeks and brought a glint into her eye that her stepfather didn’t relish. “You lay a hand on me, Gus, and it’ll be the sorriest day of your life! I mean it!”

  He dropped the hand and tried to cover bafflement with bluster. “Talkin’ big won’t get you noplace. You keep it up and I’ll take a belt to you! I’m warnin’ you—”

  “No, I’m warning you. The next time I hear of you beating one of these kids I’m going to report you to the county authorities. You’re not a fit person to have charge of children and everybody knows it! It’s high time something was done about it.”

  Her mother whispered fearfully, “Ella, Ella, don’t.” “There’s nothing to be afraid of, Mom. They have laws for people like him.” She turned her back deliberately on the strangled sounds which were all that Gus’s loose mouth could utter. “I guess they pay me a little money, even while I’m learning. I’ll send it to you.”

  “No, honey. You keep it for yourself. I—this is all so quick that I—won’t you even take off your coat?”

  “The bus is nearly due.” She hugged her mother and reached out a hand to the youngsters. “I’ll write. Every week. And after I graduate I’ll have a house and you can all come and stay with me whenever you like. I’ll miss you so much.”

  They clustered around her, talking and weeping, and her mother said, “I’m glad for you, you know that. But to go tonight—right after that awful man worried us so—”

  “I’m two years late now, Mom. The sooner the better.”

  Gus had decided to change his tune. The kid really meant to go, and she was a lot of help around the place. He advanced with a forgiving air. “Maybe I was a little hasty, Ella. Seems like we ought to talk this over, reach an understanding. I’m a reasonable man—”

  She laughed. She couldn’t help it. “I’ve had a good many years of your reasonableness. I don’t want another minute of it.”

  He clutched a chair back, his knuckles whitening. “I’ve heard all I want to hear from you. Now you get out of here. This minute. Don’t wait to pack your clothes.”

  “What clothes?” she said, walking toward the door.

  They all followed her, and her oldest brother said, “It’s pretty dark, Sis. Want me to walk you to the bus?”

  “Thanks, Jerry, but you’d better stay here with Mom. I’m not afraid.”

  It was wonderful to know as she walked down the lane, turning to wave at them through her tears, that she would never be afraid of anything again.

  * * * *

  People said that the only reason old Walt Sparks didn’t live in a shack, in spite of all his money, was that he was sentimental about the big house. He had lived there always; first with his mother, who had died when Walt was forty; for the next ten years with his wife and baby son; and from then on by himself, and he was now in his seventieth year. A long time to live in one house. />
  Among his neighbors in the widely scattered houses around the lake, to the tradespeople in Wentworth, twenty miles away, old Walt was known as a recluse, a hermit. “The old boy’s getting queerer every day,” they said. “It’s a wonder young Doc Sparks doesn’t keep more of an eye on his dad.” The older, wiser heads guessed that young Doc Sparks had tried and that his father had resisted. “Old Walt doesn’t want to have anything to do with anybody,” they said. “Afraid it might cost him money. He’s still got the first dime he ever earned. Wonder what he’s going to do with it?”

  Still, if the old gentleman had no ultimate plans, he did have a way of life. Each Friday he drove into Wentworth to collect his rents, visit his bank, pick up his meager supplies. Much as he deplored the expense of a car, it was necessary that he have one, for this. Six days a week it sat in the garage; but on the seventh, rain or shine, he wheeled it slowly out and made his way to town. Years ago he had bought inexpensive cars, but he had found that they didn’t hold up the way they should. Now he owned a big black Lincoln, powerful and certain, five years old and apparently impervious to wear. He did not consider it an extravagance, he could justify its cost to himself.

  It was a little harder to justify his gun collection. Sometimes, taking the pistols, the rifles, the muskets down from their racks, fingering the smooth metal, oiling and reloading carefully, he felt a qualm through his pleasure. One gun, for protection, yes. But twenty-five guns? On these occasions he reminded himself hastily that every man had a right to one foible, that, since he lived frugally, without a telephone, without automatic heat or hot water, without new clothes or the gadgets that were necessities to other people, he had a right to a comparatively inexpensive weakness. The sight of the loaded guns lying quiescent in their racks gave him a feeling of power, of self-sufficiency, that was very warming. He had never fired a gun in his life.

  His most genuine passion, however, was the house. It had fourteen rooms, all high-ceilinged, many with fireplaces, which were useful, because heat crept slowly through the lower floor and reached the upper ones not at all. The wood-burning stove in the kitchen kept him warm while he prepared his meals, and he usually went to bed early, rolling himself into the old-fashioned quilts and bulky comforters. Stove, fireplace brass, and bedding he kept immaculate. He tended the house as carefully as his mother had, polishing, sweeping, dusting, airing. Each day he lowered the window shades against the sun, and twice a year he tugged the big carpets outside, hung them on a line, beat them vigorously. All the rooms were kept open and livable, mahogany glowing, antimacassars primly placed on the chair backs though no heads ever rested against them. His son’s wife Isabelle sniffed at all this, had said something once about false gods and idolatry. “This isn’t a house, it’s a shrine,” she had said disturbingly.

  He answered crossly, “That’s foolish. A shrine for what?”

  “I don’t know, Father Sparks. I thought maybe you did.”

  He didn’t care for Isabelle, couldn’t imagine why George had married her. One of those smarty Eastern-school girls who talked right up to a man. She didn’t come out any more with George on his weekly visits. Said she had to stay with the children, and he was just as glad. Matter of fact he’d said more than once that he’d just as soon George didn’t come out either.

  “Seems to me a young doctor, getting started, would have something better to do with his time,” he told George.

  “I don’t like to think of you all alone out here without a soul near in case something happened to you. I just come to check up.”

  “Well, you don’t have to. There’s nothing the matter with me.”

  George looked amused. “I won’t muss up the place, Dad. Ten minutes, once a week. You can put up with that.”

  “All foolishness!”

  “I don’t know that it is. With your asthma and blood pressure—”

  “You don’t know a thing about my blood pressure! I don’t hold with doctors. Never did.”

  “Well, put it that I worry about you.”

  He would have liked to say, “Worry about my money, most likely!” but he knew that wasn’t true. George didn’t have sense enough to care about money. Not practical. Namby-pamby and soft, the way May had been.

  Old Walt’s mother had warned him against marrying May. “She’s not our kind, Walter. She’ll never make a good, careful, hard-working wife.” But within a year of his mother’s death he had married the smiling, prettily complexioned creature, and for a while all had been beer and skittles. They had romped through the house like a couple of kids, treated themselves to trips and movies, and sat down every night to May’s beautiful and extravagant dinners. He was as charmed as a man from the dim, frozen Arctic suddenly let loose in a tropical island paradise.

  Occasionally, looking over the grocery bill, he felt a pang. “Two pounds of butter in one week. May!”

  “Well, I baked that Scotch shortbread you liked, and—”

  “But two pounds!”

  She put her soft arms around his neck. “We can afford it, Walter, can’t we?”

  At first he said that they could. As the years after George’s birth went by, however, his conscience troubled him increasingly. He had to admit that May asked very little for herself, but she was insatiable in demanding things for the child. They began to quarrel about whether a new furnace should be put in, and the price of vitamin tablets, and how fast George outgrew his shoes and if he should be allowed to play in the living room.

  “I tell you, May, he’s wearing out the furniture! Climbing all over it and nicking pieces out of the legs with those fool toys of his.”

  “He doesn’t climb over it. It’s just that his legs aren’t long enough to sit in it properly, and his heels—”

  “I don’t care what it is! You keep him off that furniture!”

  “Do you really expect the furniture to last forever, Walter? Do you honestly believe you’ll never have to buy another stick till the day you die? Isn’t furniture supposed to be used and wear out?”

  “Not if it’s properly taken care of,” he said stubbornly.

  “I do take care of it. But if my son isn’t allowed to sit on a chair, or eat his meals at the table—”

  “God knows he eats! Meat every day.”

  “The doctor says he needs it. He says everyone—”

  “Don’t mention the doctor to me. Of all the silly waste! You’d think a kid couldn’t grow up by himself. In the old days—”

  “In the old days a lot of them didn’t grow up.”

  Once, in the midst of an argument, she said soberly, “Are you keeping something from me, Walter? Have we lost a lot of money? Are we poor?”

  “We aren’t yet, but we will be if you keep this up!”

  Gradually she changed, became quieter, more conservative. The arguments ceased, and he was pleased at the improvement in her. Sometimes, coming into the house, he would hear her talking and laughing with the youngster, but when she heard his step she became silent and subdued. Evenings, after George was put to bed, she sat and sewed. She was an expert needlewoman and he enjoyed watching her at it.

  “You look pretty doing that,” he told her gruffly.

  Her smile had a peculiar quality. “A good thing. I haven’t bought a new dress in five years.”

  “Well, you don’t need clothes. We don’t go anywhere.”

  “No,” she said agreeably, “and of course we don’t have anyone in.”

  The grocery bills had long since become reasonable. She fed George separately and, though he had an idea that George got butter and lamb chops, he was pleased to see beans and potatoes and margarine on his own plate.

  “Nobody could want a better meal than that,” he said defiantly, wiping his lips.

  She had taken to having only toast and tea for her dinner. “I’m glad you like it,” she said politely.

  When George was eight years old and in school all day, she suggested that she go back to her old job as a stenographer in Wentworth. �
�I believe they’d take me, even part time,” she said. “I was good at it.”

  Much as the idea of the extra money appealed to him, he vetoed this. Certain things simply were not fitting, and a wife working outside her home was one of them. Especially a wife as frail-looking as May had become in the past few years. (Oh, these silly dieting fads that women took up!) He put his foot down and no more was said about the matter. Lulled by her outward meekness, he did not see that the storm signals were flying now in earnest.

  George’s tenth birthday arrived. Walt had been away on a business trip and he arrived home a day early, not to honor the occasion, for no one had reminded him of it, but quite by accident. He was amazed to find the house in a clatter with six boys running around in it, a birthday supper on the table, and a magnificent sheep-lined jacket, size 14, peeping from an open box. Fuming and fretting, he contained himself until they were alone. Then he waved the jacket in her face.

  “What’s this for, a young king? How much did you spend for this?”

  “Eighteen dollars,” she said crisply. “He needs it. It’ll wear for two years at least.”

  He lost his temper completely. Pacing up and down amidst the wreckage of the birthday party, he spoke loudly and at length, ending up with the question he asked so often. “You’ll ruin me! Do you think I’m a rich man?”

  This time the query didn’t shatter her. “Yes,” she said angrily, “I do.” Other words came flooding from her lips, her voice harsh with the freight of them. She gave him every figure: the value of each of his properties; the amount of rent he collected; the size of his savings and government bondholdings. “You’re worth three hundred thousand dollars, and we live like paupers! I wouldn’t mind, but we aren’t poor and I’m sick of living as if we were. I saved the money for the party, it didn’t cost you a cent. I shouldn’t have had to do that. I should have a reasonable household allowance to manage. Every cent I have to ask you for, you make me feel like a criminal! Why should I have to crawl to you for the most ordinary little necessities!”