Death at the Black Bull

by Frank Hayes

  Standing at the window with a half-filled glass in her hand, looking out at the black night broken only by the flashes of heat lightning, she thought about her personal finality. The son that had not come back from the war, the daughter she had lost, and the husband who had withdrawn from life had left her embittered, to the point where that very bitterness had become her life force. It had taken a death sentence to make her realize this.

  The clink of the ice in the glass was the only sound to be heard. She placed the glass on the end table, then left the room and walked out the front door to the porch. The warm night air layered over her, displacing the coolness of the air-conditioned house. It felt good, a confirmation of life. Her exhaustion blew away on a light breeze. She stood there a long time, alone in the night, until at last she saw a car turn into the drive. She watched its progress all the way to the steps that led up to the porch. The soft hum of the engine ceased as the car rolled to a stop on the side of the driveway, and a beautiful girl emerged from the car. An immediate smile crossed Audrey’s lips.

  “Oh, Gran, I didn’t see you standing there. Were you waiting up for me?”

  “No. I just wanted to feel the night air. Your timing was impeccable.”

  She looked at the girl coming to greet her and saw the daughter she had lost. A stab of pain in her heart made her grip the railing at the top of the stairs.

  “Why didn’t you turn on the outside lights?” the girl asked.

  “The lights on the driveway were enough. Besides, I didn’t want to attract the bugs. Where are you coming from?”

  “I was out with Cal and a couple of friends. We took in a movie, then met up with some people at the local watering hole.”

  “Did you have fun?”

  “Yeah, it was okay. Always good to be with Cal, but I sometimes feel like an outsider.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, this is where I’m from, but I’ve spent so much time in boarding schools and away at college that I really don’t know anyone here. These are Cal’s friends. My friends are scattered in other parts of the country.”

  “You could make new friends here.”

  “I don’t know if my future is here. Every time I come home, I feel like a visitor. I’m unconnected. Maybe if my mother . . .”

  Audrey looked at the silhouette of her granddaughter in the dim light and again saw the girl she had lost.

  “It would be nice if we could change things, but it’s beyond our reach. Maybe . . .” Audrey’s words trailed off into the night.

  “Guess we’ve only got the here and now,” the girl said.

  “Let’s go inside,” Audrey said. “Maybe have a little treat before we go to bed. I think there’s a piece of that dark chocolate cake left over from dinner.”

  “Chocolate cake and ice cold milk, a perfect combo.” Arm in arm, they turned and walked into the house.

  The girl’s words kept echoing in Audrey’s mind. We’ve only got the here and now.

  * * *

  A roll of thunder followed by a sharp crack of lightning managed to drag Virgil out of a fitful sleep. He sat on the side of his bed like a somnambulist, barely aware of the world. He stared dully at the rivers of rain running down the window, a fulfillment of the promise of the last two days. Unrefreshed by a night of tossing and turning, he got to his feet and walked to the window. The rain was intense, at times coming sideways, driven by a persistent wind. He could see that the creek was full. Only yesterday, it was a bare whisper of itself, struggling to maintain a trickle.

  He stood by the window a long time, almost in a trance. At last, in the distance, he heard a ring, followed by a voice which at first he had some trouble placing. A few minutes later, when he got downstairs, he hit the play button again to confirm his suspicions. He heard Audrey Hayward’s voice asking him to come to the ranch.

  * * *

  It was almost eleven when he stepped out into the rain, but the gray day gave no indication of time. There was no sun or trace of clouds, just a sameness that hung over the landscape like a wet blanket. Cesar had not yet come to the house, so he had taken care of the barn chores. Star and her foal were secure. He’d even collected eggs from the coop that was attached to the barn. There wasn’t much in the way of production lately. The enduring heat and the full molt most of the birds were in had taken its toll. The ordinary work always left him feeling good and by the time he was on his way to Hayward Ranch, he was ready to put on his other hat.

  Audrey greeted him at the door. Every time he entered this place, it was like a step back into his past, but there was a slightly different feel about it today. He couldn’t put his finger on it, whether it was the tone of Audrey’s voice or something even less discernible, but it was definitely there. She led the way to the huge living room.

  “Please sit, Virgil.” She gestured toward a chair. Virgil glanced about the large room that to him had always seemed, however it reflected the history of the house, incongruous to its surroundings. The carpeted floors, the stylized decor, the overstuffed furniture. Even the walls were covered in the elaborate wallpaper that you would expect to find in a Fifth Avenue apartment in New York. There was nothing of the spare prairie that showed itself in this house.

  “Can I offer you something?”

  “No, thanks,” Virgil said. “I’m good.”

  The glass sitting on the end table next to her had not escaped his notice.

  “I guess it is a little early in the day,” she said almost absentmindedly as she glanced unseeingly at the window.

  When she turned back to face him, he thought for a second she might have lost her train of thought. He thought she looked almost vulnerable, a word he’d never associated with Audrey Hayward before. When she spoke again, there was more strength in her voice, almost as if she was making a special effort.

  “I know there’s something in the wind. Otherwise you or your deputy wouldn’t have been coming here. Something to do with Micah, I think. This place and these killings. As a matter of fact, I know this is probably the last place you want to be. The reality is, I’ve spent a lot of my life embittered by the way my life turned out, but that is my fault alone. I blame no one for my choices but myself. However, the reality of how I’ve impacted others has started to weigh heavily on me. Before I leave this world, I’d like to change that and I begin with you.”

  Virgil was completely unprepared for the Audrey that was speaking. This was a person he’d never known.

  “You may or may not know what I’m about to tell you,” she went on, “but in terms of what I want to say that doesn’t really matter. Long ago, in another life, I was in love with your father. My husband had long since given up on life and crawled into a bottle. I’m sure I was more than partly responsible. My son Caleb, as you know, never came back from the war, and out of anger and resentment I turned to your father, and I fell in love. When reality caught up with us, he rejected me. That was part of his strength, because I was married and had children. I hated him for that. Hated him . . . for the very thing that made me want him. When he married your mother, the hate grew to encompass her and then you. When Rusty fell in love with you, it was almost like fate was taunting me. Micah, my surviving son, paid a very heavy price as this played out. His father died and I didn’t care because I had become so self-absorbed. He had to take over here, whether he wanted to or not. Then when Rusty died, my bitterness came full circle and I struck back. That’s when I made you pay.”

  She looked at Virgil with a vulnerability he never expected to see in her.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “How did you make me pay? Rusty was the only reason I ever came anywhere near you. When she was gone . . . I never had any reason to come here, ever again.”

  Audrey got out of her chair and walked to the mantle of the fireplace. Then she reached up and took down a framed picture. She held it in her two hands and stud
ied it. A smile touched the corners of her mouth. Finally, she came to him and faced him. She held out the picture and he took it. At first glance, he thought it was a picture of Rusty. As he looked closer, he realized it was the girl from the picture he had seen in Caleb’s office at Hayward Trucking. He saw the strong facial resemblance to Rusty, along with the almost impish smile that she had taunted him with many times. Her eyes were slightly wider set, her cheekbones more evident.

  “My granddaughter,” Audrey said. “You’ve never met her.”

  “She’s beautiful.” He handed back the picture.

  “She looks a lot like her mother, but her father definitely left his mark. Her name is Virginia.” She held the photo so they could both look at it.

  “I never met Micah’s wife,” Virgil said.

  “Micah’s wife. Yes, she’s been gone almost twenty-five years.”

  “I had heard . . .”

  “It’s hard to keep a secret in a small town, especially when you hold the name of that town, but it’s not impossible.”

  “It must have been tough, Mike being left with two little ones.”

  “That wasn’t quite the case, Virgil.”

  Audrey took the picture and returned it to the mantle, angling it so that it faced both of them.

  “It was during the time that Micah’s wife was pregnant with Caleb that she started to show signs of instability, and it was within months of his birth that she was diagnosed schizophrenic. Before he reached his first birthday, she had already attempted suicide. Eventually, of course, she succeeded. She never had a second child.”

  “I don’t understand,” Virgil said. “Then who . . . ?”

  “This is why I called you, Virgil, and this is why I begin with you.”

  Audrey sat heavily into the chair facing him. Then took a drink from the glass.

  “Virginia is not Micah’s daughter,” she said. “She was named after her father. It was her mother’s dying wish. She is yours, Virgil. Yours and Rusty’s.”

  She sat back in her chair and reached again for the glass. The loudest noise in the room came from outside as the rain pelted the windows. Finally, Virgil got to his feet and walked to the picture. He studied it with a new intensity. He saw what he had seen earlier, but now his focus was on the nuances of difference. The set of the jaw, the pronounced cheekbones, along with a hint of other things. He knew Audrey had not told him a lie. He saw Rusty in this picture, and he saw himself.

  Without turning, he backed up to the chair and sat down. Then he turned to face Audrey. His mouth opened to frame a question, but she robbed him of his words.

  “Rusty knew she was pregnant when you went back to college for your last year,” she said. “She didn’t tell you because, well, she later told me when I found out about the pregnancy . . . She didn’t tell you because she was afraid you’d insist on coming home and not finish your final year. When she died giving birth, I hid the truth from you.”

  “I was told a ruptured appendix.”

  “If you have money, there are ways. My biggest problem was Micah. He was the only one who knew the truth here in Hayward, and it took all my powers of manipulation to get him to keep the secret. He was so overwhelmed with his wife and son and trying to salvage this place, that he was vulnerable, and I took advantage of that.”

  “So why now? After all these years?”

  “I’m still who I am, Virgil. When I leave this earth, I still want the name Hayward to mean something in this place. And I want you to protect it. You see, I’m still capable of manipulation, and now you’re invested here because of your daughter. These killings are coming a little too close to home. I want you to know that if this family is destroyed by whatever is going on, your daughter is likely to be one of its casualties. I’m hoping you won’t let that happen. Micah got the short end of the stick from his father and me, but I know now that if it hadn’t been for him we wouldn’t have survived. I’m trying in my own feeble way to acknowledge that fact, and to help him while I can to hold on to what he has built and accomplished.”

  Virgil felt like a wrangler who had just survived a stampede. Now he was trying to come to grips with reality while clouds of dust obscured the world he thought he knew.

  “Here.” Audrey stood in front of him with a glass in her hand. “You might not have wanted a drink before, but you need one now.”

  He took the glass.

  “Drink up.”

  He raised it to his lips, in almost pure reflex to her command. When he drained the glass, he saw her through its bottom. She was still standing in front of him, strangely distorted by the thickness of the glass.

  She filled his glass again. This time he took a sip without prompting. The burn in his throat felt good.

  “You know, I thought I’d go to my grave with this secret,” she said. “But I’m glad I didn’t. I suppose you hate me right now. I understand that, but if it’s any comfort to you, know I hate myself even more.”

  The liquid continued to burn in his throat, displacing the numbness. He felt the velvet texture of the chair he was sitting in, saw the woman who had returned to her seat, and at last found his voice.

  “Does she know?” To his ears the words sounded like they had come from someone else.

  “She doesn’t even know you exist. I’m sorry.”

  The feebleness of her words came in a voice almost unrecognizable. Thin and reedy, they didn’t go with the Audrey Hayward he knew. He looked at her. The knuckles of her hands gripped the arms of the chair so tightly the veins showed blue against her skin. The hair on top of her head was snow white, her face heavily lined, the remnants of youth and past beauty just about gone. Her breathing seemed labored and Virgil realized that their meeting had taken its toll. An unexpected sadness for her overtook him. He rose from his seat and stood looking down on her. She didn’t attempt to stand.

  “What are you going to do?” Her voice barely a whisper.

  “Honestly, I really have no idea, but like you, I will do what I have to do. There has to be an accounting. I’m not going to walk away from that. Now that you’ve told me about a daughter I never knew I had, well . . . You brought her out like a poker chip when it suited your purpose. Now, I’ll have to play the hand you dealt me. When it’s all over, I guess the chips will fall where they may.”

  * * *

  Micah Hayward watched from an upstairs window as Virgil Dalton left the house. He saw him running, head down, to his car through the driving rain, then watched while he drove the long driveway until he reached the county road. He wondered why he had come to the house on such a day. Then he saw the path of light coming from the door of the picker’s dining hall and knew someone else had been watching Virgil leave. In that instant, he knew there was going to be a change in his life.

  When he walked into the living room twenty minutes later, his mother was still sitting in her chair, her eyes wide open, staring at a fire she could not see. He saw one hand hanging to the side of the chair and noticed the slight sag to one side of her mouth. Before he crossed the room to her chair, he knew that whatever else he did from here on it would be as the head of Hayward Ranch and that Audrey Hayward would no longer be there to censure or endorse his decisions.

  29

  Jimmy was making his final loop of the night when he passed by Virgil’s ranch. From the county road, even in the darkness, he could see the light on in the ranch house. He turned off the road without hesitation, even though when he glanced at the digital on the dash it read two thirty. He could see Virgil sitting at the kitchen table as he stepped onto the porch. Virgil seemed to be fixed as he sat staring into space. Jimmy saw the empty glass on the table in front of him. He knew Virgil wasn’t much of a drinker, so that surprised him. A cold beer at the end of the day, a glass of wine with dinner, especially during the winter, but that was about it. Hard liquor in the middle of the night, that was som
ething else.

  Virgil hardly reacted when Jimmy knocked. Then when he knocked a second time, he barely averted his eyes, then raised his hand and waved Jimmy into the house.

  “Having trouble sleeping?” Jimmy knew the answer when he asked the question because Virgil was still in his uniform. His hat was on the table in front of him alongside the phone, an empty bottle, and a glass with maybe a swallow left in the bottom. His gun belt and gun hung on the back of the chair next to him.

  “Audrey Hayward is dead.”

  Jimmy said nothing because he wasn’t quite sure how to react. From the talk around town, he knew that there was some history between Audrey and Virgil and Virgil’s father, but Virgil himself had never mentioned any of it.

  “Sit down, Jimmy.” He said it in a voice that Jimmy had not heard before.

  “Is there something wrong, Virgil?” Jimmy rarely called him by his first name.

  “Wrong? Yeah, I guess. Or maybe right. Maybe right for the first time in a long time.”

  “Something you want to talk about?”

  Virgil turned and looked full on at Jimmy. Then seeing the concern in Jimmy’s face, he smiled.

  “No. I’m good, Jimmy, but thanks for the offer. Have to sort everything out in my own head before I can talk about it with anyone else. But when that time comes, you’ll be at the top of my list. Guess I just need some sleep now.”

  The moment passed and Jimmy saw that the man he always knew was back. Virgil got up from his chair a little unsteadily and grabbed Jimmy’s shoulder. He looked at what remained in his glass, but left it there.

  “That’s enough damage for one night,” he said. “See you later, Jimmy.”

  Virgil headed toward the stairs. Jimmy watched until he saw him switch on the light. Then he left the house.

  A few minutes later, as Jimmy was pulling out onto the hard surface, he glanced in his rearview mirror and saw the ranch house go dark.