Out of the Darkness

by Robert D. McKee

  Micah nodded.

  “Would you please fill this list for me, Mr. Tucker?” She handed him a piece of paper that was covered in her swirly cursive.

  Tucker took the list. “Of course, Mrs. Thompson. I’d be glad to.” As a rule, customers gathered their own merchandise and brought it to the counter to pay. Some patrons, though, chose to have it done for them.

  “And if you don’t mind,” Mrs. Thompson said, “I am in quite a hurry.” She stepped from the counter to examine the bolts of material stacked on the shelves along the far wall.

  Tucker turned to Micah. “What do you have there, Micah,” he asked, “two Cyclones?”

  “Yes, I do, but—”

  “I’ll need a few minutes to fill this order. Go on and take ’em. You can pay me when you come in next time.” He ducked his head to the list and made his way around the counter toward the back of the store.

  “But, Mr. Tucker,” Micah said, “Miss Charbunneau was—” He stopped when he felt Fay’s hand on his forearm. He turned to look at her. Her face was stern.

  “Hush, Micah. It’s all right,” she whispered. “I’m not in any hurry. Please, let it go.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It was perfect. Ideal. It couldn’t be better. These were the thoughts that raced through Earl Anderson’s mind as he and Sheriff Collins walked through the door of Chester Hedstrom’s clinic. As far as Anderson was concerned, the Eggers woman coming to his office that morning had been like a gift. Now the self-righteous doctor was finished.

  And as a bonus, not only could Anderson bring the loathsome Dr. Hedstrom to justice, he could win the favor of Emmett Pratt at the same time. Everyone knew the Pratts were about to become involved in a case of divorce. And although Anderson had no intention of bringing charges against Cedra Pratt, she no doubt was in this with Hedstrom up to her eyebrows. Once that got out, Mr. Pratt’s position in the divorce proceedings would improve greatly. Being the man responsible for that improvement might come in handy when Anderson began collecting campaign contributions for his reelection.

  Yes, indeed, this showed every sign of working out well.

  When Anderson and Collins entered the clinic, Dr. Hedstrom walked into the reception area from one of the back rooms. He was with Flan O’Toole, an Irishman, who, the best Earl could tell, was ninety-five if he was a day. The old coot inched his way across the floor, steadying himself with a cane. But to his credit, Earl allowed, he was moving under his own power. Earl held open the door, nodded, and gave the codger a gracious smile. It was his most practiced smile, the one he used on the constant blur of fools he was forced to encounter every day.

  Neither O’Toole nor the doctor acknowledged his or Collins’s presence.

  “Now if that hip keeps giving you trouble, Mr. O’Toole,” the doctor was saying, “you send someone over to let me know. I’ll come out to see you. I don’t want you on it any more than you have to be for a while.”

  The man nodded without speaking. He seemed to focus all his concentration on the simple act of executing the three steps that led from the clinic’s porch to the ground below. Hedstrom walked beside Mr. O’Toole all the way to the man’s wagon and helped him up into the seat. Hedstrom then unwrapped the reins from around the brake handle. “Here you go,” he said, handing the reins over. “You sure you can handle this team all the way to your place?”

  “Aye hitched ’em up, an’ Aye drofe ’em in,” O’Toole said in his thick brogue. “Aye reckon Aye’ll b’able ta dwit a-gin.”

  “All right,” Hedstrom said. He’d been standing on the hub of the front wheel, and he hopped down and gave a wave. “You take care of yourself now, Mr. O’Toole.”

  The man snapped the reins, and the wagon lurched away. Hedstrom watched for a bit as the old Irishman moved into the center of the street, then turned left on Fourth and headed out of town. Once O’Toole was out of sight, Hedstrom turned back to Earl and Collins, who were standing on the porch. He climbed the steps and walked between them back into the clinic.

  “How old are you, Earl?” he asked.

  Earl and Collins followed him back inside. “Thirty-seven. Why?” Earl could not stand this man, and he was wary of anything Hedstrom had to say.

  “When you’re Mr. O’Toole’s age, the year will be nineteen fifty-nine. Imagine that. The new century’ll be more than half over. Think of all the wonders you will have seen. Hell, by then, they may have even developed a cure for stupidity.”

  Earl felt his skin flush and his fury rise. Seeing Brad Collins cup a hand over his smile didn’t help, either. He gave the worthless sheriff a look hot enough to burn the smirk off his dull face.

  “You can make your jokes now, Hedstrom. That’s fine. But you may not think things are so funny once you realize why we’re here.”

  Two leather sofas were set at right angles against perpendicular walls of the waiting room. Hedstrom dropped down on one and crossed his legs. He gestured for the men to have a seat on the other. Collins started to do so but stopped when Earl said, “We didn’t come here to visit.”

  “No?” said the doctor. “Golly, Earl, I’d so hoped you had. I was about to offer you gents a cup of tea.”

  “Everything’s a joke with you, isn’t it?”

  “Not everything,” Hedstrom corrected. “Your being in a position of public trust, for instance. I can’t find one single thing amusing about that, although, God knows, I’ve tried.”

  Earl gave him his mean smile. It was the smile he saved for those he particularly disliked. “You might be finding it even less amusing here in a bit.”

  “I cannot imagine,” said the doctor, “how that could be possible.”

  “I received a visit from one of your acquaintances. She was sitting in the hallway outside my office when I came to work this morning.”

  “Don’t tell me. Let me guess.” The doctor stared at the ceiling and tapped his chin with an index finger as though he was pondering all the many possibilities. Finally, he said, “Could it have been a Mrs. Eggers, late of my employ?”

  “Exactly,” Earl confirmed.

  “Well,” said the doctor, clapping his hands together, “what a lucky guess.”

  Earl dug his fingernails into the meat of his palms. Even when Hedstrom was not attempting to humiliate him, the man’s very manner made Earl furious. This time, though, Anderson would not allow him to get away with his arrogance. He puffed out his chest. “If the vaudeville is finished,” he said, “perhaps we can get on with the business at hand.”

  Earl lifted the monocle that hung from a gold chain around his neck and inserted it over his right eye. “Mrs. Eggers has made the accusation that you performed an abortion yesterday afternoon.”

  “My, my, what a concerned citizen Mrs. Eggers has turned out to be.”

  “Yes,” Earl said, “I think so too.” Anderson was not a stupid man. The doctor’s attempt at irony regarding his ex-housekeeper was not lost on him, but Earl knew something the doctor did not. In front of a jury, it could easily be made to appear as though Mrs. Eggers’s actions were, indeed, those of a concerned citizen.

  “So, what now?” asked the doctor. “Do you drag me away in chains?”

  Now they were in Anderson’s domain, and he was beginning to feel more in control. He gave a friendly chuckle, allowing the monocle to flick from his eye. “Chains? You do have a flare for the dramatic, don’t you? You really should have gone on the stage. These accusations have been made. We are obliged to look into them. Of course we want to hear your response, if any.”

  “So, if I deny what she says, you’ll leave. Is that it?”

  “Well, I shouldn’t think it would all go away that easily,” Earl said with honesty.

  “No, I shouldn’t think so, either.”

  “I expect we would have to question the Pratt women. Perhaps investigate their involvement as well.”

  “All right, what do you want to know?”

  “Not so much. We’re curious to know if what Mrs. Egg
ers says is true. Did you perform an abortion on Miss Polly Pratt yesterday afternoon here in this clinic?”

  “Yes,” Dr. Hedstrom admitted without any hesitation. “I did.”

  For a moment Anderson was stunned into silence. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He’d never doubted this sanctimonious know-it-all had committed the crime. Playing God was the sort of thing he would do. After all, people like Hedstrom always felt they were above the law. But Anderson could not believe the fool was witless enough to admit it.

  Earl felt his mouth stretch into a wide, natural smile. It was one that came from his core. It was not a smile designed to communicate anything in the world short of the purest of pleasure. “Then, sir,” he said, making no attempt to hide his enjoyment, “with that, I shall order Sheriff Collins to place you under arrest and to take you to his jail.”

  Earl turned to the sheriff and said, “And I’d suggest you use the handcuffs. You never know what a desperate criminal might do.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Chester had always envied his father. Maxwell Hedstrom had been large and powerfully built. With his broad moustache and thick mane of hair, he’d been imposing in a way that caught the attention of the ladies and other men as well.

  He had been a creature of great innate dignity—a kind of dignity that Chester knew he had not inherited. Where in an instant Max Hedstrom could win the respect of a group of people merely by striding into a room, if Chester were to obtain their respect at all, he had to strive to earn it—a process not measured in seconds, as was true with his father, but measured in months or years.

  Although the man had been dead almost a decade, it was his father and his father’s dignity that Chester thought of now as Anderson and Collins paraded him down Main, his wrists chained behind his back. The two men walked on either side of him, each with a hand on one of his elbows, leading him like an animal to a pen.

  Chester could feel the shocked wake of silence the three of them left behind as they made their way to the jail. Busy people who a moment before had been going about their business, now stopped and stared.

  As Chester, Anderson, and Collins rounded the corner on Third Street, Mrs. Elkins and her daughter Missy stepped out of Blakely’s Candy Store. Missy’s pink fist was clamped around a cinnamon stick. At first Missy seemed startled when the men, marching three abreast, had stopped short to keep from running her over, but with quick recognition the little girl said, “Oh, hi, Dr. Hedstrom. Look, Mommy, it’s the doctor.”

  Mrs. Elkins, a large, ruddy-faced woman who always wore a smile, said, “Why, hello, Dr. Hed—” But with a second look, her smile faded, and she yanked her daughter back into the candy store’s doorway to allow the men to pass.

  As they walked on, Chester overheard the girl ask her mother what those things were on the doctor’s wrists.

  “Hush, Missy,” her mother whispered. “You hush up right now.”

  Earl Anderson snickered.

  Back at the clinic when Anderson had asked Chester whether he had performed the abortion, Chester had been forced to make a quick decision. He could have lied. Although he couldn’t remember the last time he had told a lie, he was not so pure as to be above such a thing. Perhaps in this situation it would have been the smart thing to do. Even if Anderson had questioned the Pratt women, Cedra was strong enough and smart enough to handle the little prosecutor. In the end it would have come down to Chester’s word against Mrs. Eggers, and Chester doubted the prosecution would have gone very far with that and nothing more.

  But why should he lie to this weasel? To Chester’s way of thinking, in a kind of perverse way, lying to someone implied respect. He would never lie to Earl Anderson.

  The jail was on the other side of the street, four doors down from Micah McConner’s new office. As they stepped off the boardwalk to cross over, Chester glanced toward Micah’s office but could see no activity through the front windows. That was fine. He preferred Micah not see him like this.

  Micah had fixed the place up nicely. The shingle looked good next to the front door. Very professional. Yesterday morning Chester had come over and helped Micah hang the sign.

  Had it been only twenty-four hours? Chester wondered. A lot had happened.

  With his arms pulled back, Chester’s shoulders began to cramp, but he ignored the pain and kept his head up.

  Chester was amazed at the effect his passing in irons had on the townsfolk. It was as though, upon seeing him, the citizenry was frozen. A man rushing down the street on horseback reined in sharply and allowed them to walk in front. Although the rider said nothing, Chester could feel the heat of the man’s eyes.

  “You’ll have the whole cell block to yourself, Doctor,” Collins said. “Bashful Paxton’s been the only prisoner I’ve had for weeks, and of course once he sobers up I always let him go.”

  Bashful was a barber who worked the second chair in Guthrie Bowls’s shop. Unlike most barbers, Bashful was not the talkative sort. In fact, six days a week he would hardly say a word even if spoken to. Every Saturday night, though, he would get drunk, and when Bashful got drunk, his personality underwent some changes. He’d been known to stand in the middle of the street and shout obscenities at everyone within earshot. There was hardly a Saturday that Bashful didn’t pass the night in one of the sheriff’s cells.

  Collins had no deputy, so he had to lock up the office when he left. Chester watched as the tall, lean sheriff pulled a key from his pocket and opened the front door. Collins stepped aside so Chester could go in. “I reckon I can handle it from here, Mr. Anderson,” said the sheriff, “if you need to be getting back to the courthouse.”

  “No, no,” said Anderson. “I wouldn’t dream of leaving you alone with this criminal until you have him secured in his cell.” He followed Chester through the door, adding with a laugh, “You can never be too careful.”

  They crossed Collins’s office and walked through a door that led to a large room in back. The room held four empty cells, two on each side, with an aisle down the middle. Collins nodded to the second cell on the right. “I’ll put you in here, doctor,” he said. “It’s got the newest mattress.” He opened the cell door and followed Chester in. He pulled a small key from his vest pocket and undid the handcuffs. He draped the chain of the cuffs over his shoulder and stepped back into the aisle, locking the door behind him. To Anderson, he said, “I got some paperwork I need to do.”

  “Fine, sheriff,” Anderson said. “I’ll be right out.”

  Both Chester and Anderson watched as the sheriff returned to his office. Once he was gone, Anderson began to pace. For a full minute without speaking he walked back and forth staring in at the doctor. When he stopped, he leaned toward the bars and jutted an index finger toward Chester’s chest. “I got you now, you son of a bitch. I got you now.” The little man looked very pleased. “Do you know what you did back there? Do you have any idea?” He gave his head a shake as though astonished. “You admitted in the presence of the prosecuting attorney and the county sheriff to committing a major felony. That was the dumbest damn thing I have ever seen in my life. Yes, sir. The dumbest by far.”

  Chester didn’t respond.

  Anderson shone his unctuous smile into the cell for a bit longer. He then turned and started for the door. Halfway there, he stopped. It seemed to Chester that Anderson was having such a fine time, he didn’t want to let go of the moment. “Hedstrom, your fascination with the new century is well known. You’re always showing off your new toys and making your silly predictions.” He moved back toward the cell and looked up through the bars. “Well, here’s a prediction for you. I predict you’ll be spending the first fourteen years of your exciting new century at the Wyoming State Penitentiary swinging a sledge hammer at some very large rocks.” He tapped the end of his pointed nose. “That’s my prediction for the future.” With a laugh loud enough that it sounded as though it came from a man twice his size, the prosecutor departed.

  During the walk from home a
nd throughout Anderson’s little speech, Chester had forced himself to remain impassive. Whatever feelings might have wanted to rise to the surface, he’d grabbed by the neck and shoved back down. He’d be damned before he showed Earl Anderson any weakness.

  Now that he was alone he looked around at his bleak surroundings: the rough cement floor, the brick walls, the steel bars. Even now he fought to hold back the fear he felt bubbling inside. Perhaps this time he’d taken on too much.

  He took a deep breath and crossed the cell to the pathetic bunk. He lowered himself to a sitting position, dropped his head into his hands, and thought about his father.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Micah slid the summons, complaint, and filing fees across the counter to Sue Anne Flagstone, the deputy clerk of the district court. He was in the clerk’s office filing his first action as an attorney. The case of Pratt versus Pratt.

  “Oh, my,” hummed Sue Anne in her sing-songy voice, “this is exciting, isn’t it?”

  Sue Anne was a thin woman whose eyes were a little crossed. The right eye always looked askance, as though whatever minor god was assigned the task of assembling faces had misaligned the threads when he screwed the eyeball into its socket. Micah was never sure which eye he should look into.

  “Our newest attorney filing his very first law suit.”

  She was right; it was exciting. After Cedra came to see him early this morning, he’d spent all the rest of the day holed up in his office drafting his pleadings, making sure everything was right. Every t crossed, every i dotted.

  But as much as Micah wanted his first case to be a success, he was not optimistic. It was very difficult to obtain a divorce. Marriage was sacrosanct, protected by culture, custom, and law.

  The statute allowing for divorce laid out eleven very specific causes for its granting. Adultery, physical incompetence of one of the parties, a spouse convicted of a felony and sentenced to prison, desertion for a minimum of one year, drunkenness, extreme cruelty, a husband failing to provide his wife the necessities of life, either party offering such indignities as to render life intolerable, a husband’s vagrancy, conviction of a felony prior to the marriage of which the aggrieved party was unaware, or, finally, a wife’s pregnancy at the time of the marriage by a man other than her intended husband and without the intended husband’s knowledge.