Escape Artist

by Ed Ifkovic

  Boon slurred his words. “Girl Reporter Edna Ferber Discovers Body in Lovers Lane. And underneath that: Girl Reporter Frequent Habitué of Lovers Lane.”

  Sam reddened, “That’s not very funny, Matt.”

  Miss Ivy tsked tsked.

  “I’m not trying to be funny,” Boon smirked.

  I raised my voice. “You’re not trying to be a gentleman either.”

  Sam walked away, baffled, disappearing into the pressroom. When he returned, he stood there in the doorway, staring from me to Boon.

  “Miss Ferber, I’m trying to protect your virtue.” Boon’s voice was cloying, sweet. “Why do you want to be the subject of gossip in town?”

  I fired back. “Let me worry about my own name.”

  Tension in the city room: voices raised, curt responses, silence heavy and arctic. Should I speak again, I would be shouting. Time stopped around us. Abrupt movement from the back room broke our suspense. I jumped. Mac stood there, a smear of black ink on his cheek, a sheaf of copy in his gigantic hands hanging down to the floor like spilled leaves. He was focused on me, which rattled me. I couldn’t make out the impassive expression. Slowly, he turned his head toward Boon, who hadn’t noticed, intent as he was on smiling stupidly at me. The corners of Mac’s mouth twitched.

  The door opened, and Byron Beveridge tripped down the five steps, brimming with news. When I looked toward the printing shop, Mac was gone.

  “Got the latest on the murder.” Beveridge’s movements were a little too jaunty, his voice too spirited. “Not from Chief Stone, of course, that piece of incommunicative granite, but from Jarvis Hull, who barbers his hair. The coroner says Frana was killed on Friday. Sometime that afternoon or night. It rained all day Saturday and no one went into Lovers Lane. Another thing. It seems the chief interviewed Christ Lempke again, and the man mentioned scaring away a young man from under Frana’s locked, upstairs bedroom window the other night, a young man identified as Jake Smuddie from Lawrence University.”

  “I know him.” I spoke in a small voice.

  “You do?” Miss Ivy asked.

  “He’s a freshman at the University. He used to be Frana’s boyfriend…”

  Sam looked perplexed. “What was he doing playing Romeo under her balcony the other night?”

  Byron Beveridge kept trying to interrupt. “If you all would let me finish…” We waited. “The uncle said Frana had seen him sometime last year, but had jilted him, forced by her family who insisted she wasn’t ready for marriage. He didn’t take rejection kindly. He’s been a pest at the farmhouse, and Frana’s father once scared him with a blast from a shotgun. Kept coming back like a bad penny or a hungry dog.”

  Boon sneered. “Nice friends you have, Miss Ferber.”

  I spoke to Byron. “Did Chief Stone talk to Jake?”

  “He did. Out at the university. But Herr Professor interrupted and put an end to the interrogation. Said his son had nothing to do with Frana any more, whose death, he said, was the result of a life lived carelessly. Caleb remarked he was not through questioning the boy, not by a long shot.”

  I fought the sudden image of the strapping footballer Jake, those strong hands twisting Frana’s delicate neck. No, no.

  No.

  ***

  When I returned home around three to take my father for a short walk, I discovered Kathe helping Fannie with cleaning the parlor and dining room carpets, the beginning of Fannie’s early summer housekeeping. In a hurry to be done, she was dragging carpets to the back clothesline and attacking them with the ferocity of a Saracen warrior. I sought her out in the yard, but Kathe didn’t want to talk about Frana’s death. She closed her eyes and shook her head vigorously when I expressed sympathy. Frana and Kathe were friends—though rivals. When I asked about Jake Smuddie, Kathe glowered.

  “Leave him out of this,” she snarled. “He ain’t part of this. He got nothing to do with it.”

  I asked her about the rumor of Frana getting on the train with a drummer. “Who told you that, Kathe?”

  She turned away, dropping the carpet beater. I’d learned that Caleb Stone and Amos Moss were interviewing the guests at the Sherman House, especially the traveling salesmen there; and I’d heard through Sam Ryan that, in fact, three men had left on the 3:01 on Friday afternoon, alone. Chief Stone was tracking them down. Could one of those men be the murderer of Frana? One of those bilious, portly, scratching men who tucked themselves with their indigestion and gout and sample cases into the worn seats of the Chicago and Northwestern train. When I mentioned the drummers, Kathe looked ready to say something, but stopped.

  “Where is Jake Smuddie?” I asked her.

  Infuriated, Kathe swung around, eyes blazing. “You leave him alone.”

  I suddenly knew where to find the footballer.

  Of course, he wouldn’t be at his home. Doubtless Herr Professor wouldn’t lock up the young man as Frana’s parents unsuccessfully tried to do with her. No, watching Kathe assault the carpets in a fury, I realized Kathe would be joining Jake after she left the Ferber household. I knew that Kathe and Jake often lingered, out of both sets of parents’ forbidding eyes, in the gazebo in City Park, the sheltered retreat set back in a grove of white pines, a cool summer haven and now, in serene June, a hiding place. He’d be there, waiting for Kathe to finish her work.

  ***

  Within minutes, walking briskly, I approached the gazebo from the side and startled Jake Smuddie, sitting on a bench, dressed in his football jersey. He was leaning over a thick tome, concentrating, his face inches from the book. He turned, expecting someone. “I’m not Kathe.”

  He smiled and stood. The book toppled to the ground. I noticed the title: Elements of Moral Philosophy, and I thought, cruelly, a little too late, no?

  “I can see that.” A pause. “Hello, Edna.”

  My heart fluttered as I looked at the handsome boy.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m not hiding. We—Kathe and me—we always come here.” Then he swallowed. “Yeah, I guess I’m hiding. From my father. He thinks I’m at the college library, studying.” He pointed at the book, which now rested on his boot. “But I couldn’t stay at home. He’s not happy with me these days.” He gave me a wispy smile. “He says I’ve brought shame to the family.”

  “Well, have you?”

  He looked hurt, and I regretted my sharpness. I stared into his wide, milk-fed boy’s face on that rough-and-tumble physique. I’d never thought him capable of anything untoward, though I gave him considerable license because he was so handsome. Attractive souls, I’d learned long ago, had a freedom in life that mere mortals—the bland, the dull, and the otherwise—didn’t possess. Plain girls learned that lesson early.

  Unlike the other boasting boys, Jake Smuddie was always a decent sort, with a quiet manner. Boys like Jake never noticed me, but, peculiarly, Jake had. He laughed at my stories and sometimes talked to me. The afternoon following my performance in A Scrap of Paper, he stopped me on College Avenue and told me how much fun he’d had. “You make me laugh out loud, Edna.” That surprised me, and I blushed. Jake reached into a cloth satchel slung over his shoulder and took out a thin volume, thrusting it out toward me.

  “What?” I stared into his handsome face.

  “I want you to have this.”

  A beautiful edition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I held the slender leatherbound volume in my hand, an awful weight, as he mumbled something I didn’t catch, turned, and walked away.

  That night, showing off the book at the dinner table, perhaps saying the name “Jake” a little too much, Fannie boiled over. I’d been watching her simmer. She, the pretty girl, had a not-so-secret crush on the footballer, and, unlike me, had notoriously (and unsuccessfully) flirted with him at school dances and even in broad daylight on College Avenue. Jake had ignored her. Now, eyeing the Shakespeare in my hand, she sniped, “He probably stole it from his father’s library.”

  “I think it’s a touching gift.” />
  Fannie drew in her cheeks, narrowed her eyes. “He probably knows the only companion you’ll ever have is a book.”

  “Fannie!” my father thundered.

  “Well, I’m not sorry.”

  Jake’s only fault was his lap-dog devotion to the beautiful young blond girls of town. Which must be some sort of punishable crime in the universe I created in my mind.

  “I’ve been foolish.” Jake picked up the dropped book.

  “Chief Stone giving you a hard time?”

  He blushed. “I should have told him right away about my stupid visit to Frana’s home.”

  “When was that?”

  “The night before she, you know, died.” His voice cracked.

  “Good God.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “Why did you go there? You’re courting Kathe Schmidt, no?” I waited, but he didn’t answer. His eyes were watery and he rubbed them with the back of his hand. “Who you’ll be meeting here shortly, right? After she pounds the Ferber carpets into perdition.”

  A genuine smile, warm. “Kathe’s a little slip of a girl, Edna, but she packs a mean wallop with a stick.” He considered his words. “No, no, I don’t mean anything bad, you know. I’m trying to make a…” He stopped.

  “Why did you go there?”

  “My father says I shouldn’t be with a high school girl now that I’m at Lawrence. But we’re just a year apart, really. And what he really means is that I shouldn’t be courting any girl. He’s made that clear.”

  “You and Kathe?”

  He looked away for a second. “I was thinking of Frana. I used to be with her all the time, Edna. Last year at Ryan. You know that. You saw us together. She was a grade behind me, but that didn’t matter. She liked me. Then out of the blue she left me last fall. Just told me to go away.” He hesitated to say what was on his mind. “She had trouble at home,” he whispered. “It made her, I think, afraid of people.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He licked his lip. “It was a secret she let slip out. She was crying one night and…”

  “Tell me.”

  “One of her brothers…bothered her a lot. He, you know, tried to…but …” He stopped. “She was scared, Edna.”

  My mind swam. Violent, horrible images floated before my eyes. I recalled a mysterious remark from Esther. Frana doesn’t like to go home sometimes. Why? I’d asked. Esther just shook her head.

  Secrets, I thought. The real lives of Appleton, lived behind closed doors. When I started out at the Crescent, that plump girl whose visions of life came from Dickens and Thackeray, I’d been woefully innocent, and Sam Ryan purposely kept me from the dark underbelly. It wasn’t possible. Now, a year later, I understood that darkness loomed on too many lost souls’ horizons. The first time I saw a drunken man slap his wife as I joined a noisy celebratory crowd outside a beer hall, I was stunned and couldn’t sleep that night. Yet last week when I was sent by Sam Ryan to interview a doctor who was hawking some new, improved health elixir, the august doctor, a slobbering man in his seventies, was startled that a nineteen-year-old girl was doing the interview. All of a sudden he reached into a drawer and thrust before me some photographs—the kind of risqué French postcards I’d seen high-school boys tittering over. The doctor watched me closely, expecting—what?—screams, horror…fainting. But I’d been on the streets of Appleton for a year now. “Interesting,” I stated. And stood up to leave.

  Now, beside a sad Jake, I questioned, “Did you ask her about it?”

  He shook his head. “I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

  “So she just left you?”

  “Just told me to go away. It drove me crazy. I’d see her around town, and she’d stay away from me. But then we met by chance a month ago or so back, bumped into each other on College, and we talked a while. I guess I…went a little crazy.”

  “But you are seeing Kathe.” A fact, stated bluntly.

  He nodded. “I started seeing her right after Frana told me goodbye.” The last word hung in the air, awful and loaded. “I guess Kathe had been around me a lot and I didn’t notice. When Frana said goodbye, suddenly Kathe was there, and, well…” He waved his hand in the air.

  I knew all of this. I’d watched parts of the curious evolution and heard the rest of it through Esther, who’d blathered about all the ups and downs of Jake Smuddie’s infatuation with Frana, as well as Kathe’s shameless pursuit of the jilted boy. Kathe had been telling friends she and Jake were “close” long before they appeared at a barn dance at the Masonic Hall this past February. “I know, I know,” I told him now.

  Jake looked away for a second. “I never lost my feelings for Frana, and I was angry that she told me goodbye. When I talked to her last month, she said she had a way out. That surprised me. She was always talking about New York. You know, I said to her—Frana, you’ve never even been to New York, much less Broadway. She got mad at me. She really wanted a different life…away from her home. But I don’t think she knew how to get away clean. I suspected there was somebody wooing her, whispering something in her ear.”

  “No idea who?”

  “Somebody not in high school, that’s all I knew.”

  “Why?”

  “When I said we should talk again, she laughed. ‘Isn’t that pushy Kathe enough for you?’ She made fun of me. She wanted to be around a mature man who valued her talent. What does that mean—valued her? She ain’t a…a porcelain vase.”

  “But after all that you went to her house?”

  He gazed over my shoulder, his face reddening. “After we broke up, I used to wander to her yard…until her uncle chased me away with a shotgun. When Kathe told me that her family locked her in at night, guarded her, and even sent that uncle of hers to and from school, I had to see her. She was a prisoner. Kathe told me she was seeing an older man who promised her a new life away from Appleton, a man with bucks in his pocket, and I got, well, bothered.” His lips trembled. “Edna, I never lost my feelings for her. I wanted her back in my life, and I thought if I talked to her…”

  “What were you thinking?”

  “I know. It was stupid. I went through the Lempke back fields in the dark, bumping into the chicken coops so that the whole world was alerted, and I threw pebbles against her window. They locked her in at night and the window had bars nailed across it. She could open it a few inches. I thought she’d be happy to see me, the two of us whispering there, the rest of the house asleep. The house dark. But you know what she said to me? ‘Go way. Just go away. I’m getting married. I’m going away. Tomorrow.’ That was crazy—she looked like a nun or something, standing there in this dark robe in the shadows. And then I saw a flash of lantern light behind her, all shaky, and her crazy uncle was there, peering down at me. It was awful. He yelled at me, ‘I kills you, I kills you, bad bad person.’ I panicked and ran away. But as I did, I saw him slap her right across the face. She screamed like a polecat, I tell you. So I ran. You know, I ran and ran. Edna, I just wanted to save her.”

  “Jake, you know…” I stopped. There was a shriek behind me. Kathe Schmidt ran lopsidedly, stumbling, toward the gazebo. I expected to see a carpet beater flying in her hand. She’d obviously abandoned her chores at the Ferber backyard. Fannie would be livid and blame me.

  “I knew you’d be here, Edna. You’re not a friend.” Her words ended in a scream.

  True. We didn’t like each other. An indication of taste on my part, foolishness on hers.

  “Jake, she’s a reporter.”

  Jake shook his head. “Kathe, she’s one of the people we know.”

  Kathe glowered. “What did you tell her?”

  “Nothing I haven’t told the chief of police.”

  “What?”

  Jake talked to me. “You know, after my father closed down my interview with Chief Stone, I decided to see him myself. I stopped in at the police station before I came here and told him everything I just told you.”

  Decent, this young man. A c
ommendable act, a boy better than his esteemed father.

  “You did what?” Kathe yelled.

  “It was the right thing to do.”

  Kathe was beside herself, swirling around, out of control. “What’s gonna happen to us?” she barked, shoving her face close to his. Jake was watching her with wide and, unfortunately, mournful eyes.

  “Frana’s dead.” Tears matched his words. “That just happened.”

  The line surprised me. That just happened. What did that mean? Her death was a chance event? Or her death just occurred yesterday? Or he hadn’t planned it but it happened? What was he saying?

  Kathe was caught up in a mindless rant. “You know, Jake, you didn’t think I knew about your…your foolishness about that girl. When her name came up, you got quiet and dopey. How was I supposed to feel? You’re with me at the Easter dinner at the Methodist Church, and she walks in, and you start to stammer, can’t take your eyes off her. Think about it, for God’s sake.” She caught her breath. “You know, I wanted her to run away with someone. I really did.”

  I interrupted. “Is that why you told folks about her getting on the train with an older man?”

  Kathe wanted to stomp me as if I were a bug. “I thought that’s what she did when they couldn’t find her. She told me her plans, Edna. She told me. She said she’d be leaving with a man who said he’d marry her…”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” Jake was perplexed.

  “I keep secrets.”

  “Did you know about the note to the school—the whole plan?”

  She hesitated, but then shook her head. “I knew she had to get away. She was afraid of her uncle. He was getting crazier and crazier. Her brothers. My God, they nailed bars on her window. They locked her in right after school.”

  “They knew about the older man?” I asked.

  “She’d told them, throwing it in their face, I guess. That was a mistake. You know, her uncle told her he’d kill her if she didn’t obey the family. They’re old country German Catholics, you know, severe as everything, and she was just too fun loving. They were always beating her. Her brothers…You saw the welts and…”