by John Maclay
There was no reply, and he turned the knob and thrust his grizzled head into the room. The covers were tumbled back, but the bed was empty. The door into the bath was, however, open.
He felt something tighten in his throat. He stepped to the door and tapped again. “Do you need help, Miss Pelling?”
Still there was no sound.
He flipped the switch and light blazed from the old-fashioned white ceramic tiles. Dorothy lay sprawled, face down, against the tub, her cane caught beneath her hips, her legs at ungainly angles.
Dead? He touched her wrist, found it cool, but not with the chill of death. She was alive, he thought.
Catching her as gently as he could manage in the cramped space, he turned her onto her back, straightening her limbs and pulling her nightgown down over her knees. Her face was drawn down on the left side, the eyes wide, staring up into his, trying, he could feel, to convey something to him.
But this stroke was a major one, unlike the earlier. This time Dorothy Pelling would never ask the question or say the words that burned on her frozen lips.
THE CREEK, IT DONE RIZ
Another slightly warped tale of East Texas.
Only the Lord knows why I ever took the old road that day, particularly since the water was out all over the map from the big rains. I could have stuck a dozen times, coming across the bottom lands. It’s a wonder in this world that none of the rickety little bridges were washed out—or that one of them didn’t go out with me halfway across. Still, Pa’s old 1939 Plymouth could mighty nearly swim, and we always took it out when we were going way down into the boondocks.
The whole thing was a lot of foolishness, anyway. I didn’t get a degree from Texas A&M in order to go paddling around in the river-bottom in the middle of a flood to count hogs. But try telling the boss that. He sits in his air-conditioned office, thinking up dumb schemes, and never knows if it rains or shines. And he can come up with some of the gosh-awfulest ideas. A hog census! Now I ask you: how he thought that knowing where every hog in the county was located would help him sell his damn feed, I don’t know.
Anyway, there I was in the river bottom in a car twice as old as I was, sloshing down a road that wasn’t much more than a lane when I could see it, which wasn’t often. The wet sweetgum saplings were bent way down and slapping across the windshield. I was crawling along, cussing some, when I saw something out in the woods.
I crept on until I could feel gravel under the wheels; then I stopped. I could have sworn I saw an old man sitting on a stump. I stuck my feet into the rubber boots I had learned to take along with me, being as most hog-pens can’t be said to do shoes any good at all. Then I got out and started off into a thicket. And sure enough, there was a grizzly-headed old cuss, soaked to the bone, dripping water off his nose and his eyebrows. He never acted as if he saw me, just muttered to himself as if that’s what he’d been doing for quite a while.
When I got close enough to hear, I stood there for a minute, admiring his style. You don’t hear cussing like that any more, with real feeling and meaning to it. And he was cussing the weather, which deserved everything he gave it and then some. But it was wet as all get-out, and finally I went up and touched him on the shoulder.
“Sir, I beg your pardon,” I said, “but would you like a ride someplace? Out of the wet?”
He gave a jerk and looked up at me for a minute, sizing me up. Then he gave me a couple of cusses too.
I shook my head admiringly. “It’s a privilege to listen to a man who can handle the language the way you do,” I said. “Even my Pa, and he’s no slouch, can’t touch you. But it does look like you’re set to catch your death of cold, if you sit out here much longer.”
Then he squinched up his eyes and looked me over, real carefully. “You look to be a Jenkins,” he said, when he had gone from top to bottom. “Got that Jenkins jaw. Any kin to Ralph Jenkins?”
“That’s my Pa,” I said. It’s the darndest thing—anyplace I go, people spot me for Pa’s son right off. Even if they never laid eyes on me before.
He grunted and shifted on the stump. “Tell you, Son,” he said, “I ain’t got no place to go that you can take me to in no car. But bein’ as you’re Ralph’s boy, why you might help me out a little bit.”
Now that’s where I should’ve said goodbye and been off to count hogs. But Pa raised us all to be polite and helpful to old folks, and I can’t seem to break the habit. When an old geezer looks at you kind of slant-eyed, with his head cocked on one side like he’s figuring out how far he can con you, it’s time to take off. Not me, though. No brains, that’s me.
So pretty soon I found myself slogging down a pig-trail through the woods, looking sharp for cottonmouth moccasins and stump-holes. He kept talking all the time, as if he was scared I’d change my mind and leave him. Nothing he said made me anxious to keep on.
“I’ve got a kind of boat a little piece further on, tied up along Eel Creek. If it’s still there, we can take it and get up to my house. The house ain’t washed away; it’s just the damn creek’s done riz so I can’t get to the yard. With a strong young fellow like you to help me with the boat, I kin make it.” He paused and panted a while. I could see that he wasn’t in too good shape.
I turned around and said, “Why, Pa could put you up until the water goes down. He’d be glad to. Why don’t you just go back to the car with me, and I’ll take you straight on in and have you dry in no time at all.”
He started shaking his head before I was done. Then he looked all around, really careful, as if anybody but a couple of fools would have been out in the woods with the river out of its banks.
“I guess I ought to tell you, Son, seein’ as how you’re helpin’ me and all. I’ve got my life’s savings buried in that yard. If the river backs the creek up too high, it’ll likely wash it right away. It’s all I’ve got to stand me through my old age. I just got to get back there and get it out before the water comes up any more.”
Well, he did sound pitiful. I couldn’t help but wonder why he didn’t dig up his money before he left, but I guessed that you might be forgetful at his age. So we went on, and the water was mighty near the tops of my boots before we came to his boat. Then I saw why he called it a kind of a boat. The baling bucket was the only thing that didn’t have a hole in it. A good, sound log would have been a lot safer to try to travel on.
“You sure you want to risk that thing?” I asked him.
“It’s a sight better than it looks,” he answered. “I been fishing in that boat for twenty years and never drowned yet.”
I never was one to believe in miracles, but maybe such things happen, or else he was an uncommonly solid ghost. But I was pledged to help him, so I bailed out the water that was sloshing around in the bottom of the thing and heaved it out into the creek. I stood there and watched the little wiggles of water come through the holes and start moving down the sides.
He got right in and started bailing. “Reason I had to have help,” he said, “is somebody has to bail while the other one rows. I always borrow one of Rupe Miller’s kids to do the bailing, when I go fishing, but they left when the water got high. Get in, Boy. Let’s get moving. That water’s not going to wait on us.”
So I said a prayer, which would have pleased Ma, and got in. Then I didn’t have time to pray. That water was wild as a yearling colt. It took everything I could do to keep the boat from taking off in ten directions at once.
I fought with the paddle to fend us off floating logs and brush-piles. I guess I came nearer to poling it along than paddling. In the middle of all that, it came to me—I didn’t know his name. I twisted my head ’round and yelled, “Hey, Mister, what’s your name?”
He looked up from his bucket, kind of startled. “Why, I’m Abe Willitts. I thought everybody in the county knowed of old Abe.”
Then I really started to sweat. Everybody knew about Abe Willitts, sure
enough. When I was little, Ma’d hush me up with, “Crazy Abe’ll get you, if you don’t be good.” When his wife died, all the women looked at each other and said, “He finally killed her. I knew he would, one day.” And nobody could prove them wrong, because she was buried by the time he got around to letting anybody know she was dead.
Even Pa, who wouldn’t hear a bad word about anyone, had to be still when that hunter disappeared. He’d told his wife that he was going to bird-hunt down in the bottoms, and he’d intended to get Abe and his setter to help him find the birds. Nobody ever saw nor heard from him again. They looked too. All over the place, with dogs and men. Abe claimed he never got there at all, and nobody could prove different.
So here I was in a leaky boat in the middle of a flood with a crazy man. A hog census looked mightily calm and peaceful, when I thought about it. Still, I hadn’t time to worry overmuch just then. Working that crazy piece of junk around the bends in the creek took all my energy. By the time we came in sight of the house, I was done in, sure enough.
Abe jumped out onto the bank, only it was the yard fence, the bank being a hundred yards behind us in the middle of the flood, and tied his rope to a fencepost. “Here we are, Boy. You just wait right here, and I’ll go ’round and dig up my savings and be right back.” His eyes slid round at me and didn’t look quite sane.
“I’m too tired to move, Sir,” I said. “You just get your stuff, and I’ll rest. It’ll take all we both can do to get us back up that creek.”
Soon as he was gone around the house, I slid out of the boat and eased up the slope. It took a while, and once he looked out around the corner of the porch to see if I was still in the boat. Luckily, I’d propped up the bucket so it looked like a head leaning against the edge, and he didn’t go down to check. I stayed hidden in the bushes for a while to let my heart quit thumping, then I went on.
When I peeped around the porch, he was digging hard. You could hear his shovel going “Shloop! Shloop!” in the mud, because the water had got around to that side of the house too. He was in an almighty hurry. I scootched down and watched. I don’t quite know why, but I just had to know what it was he was in such a hurry and a sweat about. He had to be living on Social Security, just like Pa and everybody else their age. I figured he couldn’t have saved up enough to amount to anything.
When a shovelful of mud came out of that hole with something dark and solid on it, I perked up. It was a hunting jacket, as I could tell after it lay there a while and the rain washed off the mud. The kind with a bag in back for shot birds and shell-pockets across the front. Then Abe’s hand came up with a shotgun in it and laid it on the ground.
I didn’t wait to see more. All of a sudden, I figured I’d better be back at the boat—or further still—when Abe came around the corner of that house. I made it a lot quicker than I’d come and leaned back in the boat as if I’d been dozing. Then I got to thinking.
Whatever he was getting out of that hole, he’d likely send down the flood. Maybe he’d feel safe then. Maybe not—the more I thought about going back up that creek with him bailing behind me, the less I liked the notion. I had a little money in my pocket. Probably about what that hunter had had. And nobody knew where I was or what I was doing.
I eased out into the bushes and crept along until I found a likely log. It was half afloat, already, so I goosed it out into the current and held onto a stub of branch, with my head close under the side so it couldn’t be seen. That log and I whirled and twirled and twiddled down the creek with the rest of the stuff floating there until we lodged way down on Bobcat Ridge. I guess Abe never did know what happened to me.
He must’ve tried to make it back in that boat, all by himself. We’ll never know, though. They didn’t look for him nearly as hard as they did for that hunter.
JIGSAW
According to a newspaper account, many years ago, there was actually a serial killer who distributed bits of his victims widely across west Texas and Oklahoma. Who could resist making a story of that?
They found his head in Grand River. It took a while, because I had spray painted it with marble-colored enamel and set it up in the town’s only park, where most thought it was a bust of somebody important. Only when it began to stink did the park attendant check out the thing and discover what it really was.
Then the law and the papers and the politicians went into a flap that would have been funny if it hadn’t been so ridiculous. Instead of checking with other places for painted pieces of a man, they just raved and roared and didn’t get the point at all.
People are so damn dumb! That’s why I can continue my life’s work without much fear of discovery. Even after they identified that head, through the dental work, they didn’t seem to understand that there had been a lot more parts to Ben Craddock. Not until the others began to show up, scattered to hell and gone across the country, did they understand just what I had done, and even then it took them months to put it all together, if you will pardon a bad pun.
I had created the world’s first human jigsaw puzzle. Each piece could be fitted into its proper place, if anyone had the wit to check it out. And each piece was a different color, as a jigsaw puzzle piece ought to be.
When they got it assembled, they got a real shock when they saw the overall design, but of course it took them half a year to do that. By that time the colors had run and faded, and the flesh beneath the paint had shrunk and ruined the effect of my painting.
Being an artist can be frustrating, when those the art was meant for don’t understand it. That has always been my problem; even my parents didn’t appreciate it when I reassembled that cat into a more pleasing design and painted it blue. The child psychiatrists were worse, though being easier to deceive, they made it possible for me to go free when I was eighteen.
Now I can follow my artistic bent as I please. My job in the artists’ supply shop gives me a living, as well as all the paints and brushes (at discount prices) that I could possibly want. All the customers love me. I understand, you see, just what they are trying to do, whether or not they have quite succeeded in getting the effect they intended.
Of course I leave them strictly alone. It wouldn’t do to create art by using people you know. Aside from its being rude, even the police might trace them back, when identified, to a common denominator, which would be the shop, Painters’ Prize, and its friendly clerk, me.
Ben Craddock has been by far my best work. The first few were experiments, and Lucas Granieri was a less ambitious project, for I merely decorated him and suspended him from the top of a pine tree in the Big Thicket. By the time he was found, the paint had washed to slime, and the glass Christmas tree balls had been blown away by the big storm last winter. What a waste of talent!
He was, the sheriff’s department decided, a suicide. As I said before, people are incredibly stupid. How many suicides have streaks of purple paint under their skivvies? Or traces of tinsel and crumbs of blown glass caught about their persons, even after spending the winter out in the weather?
No, after that fiasco, I decided to stop piddling around with minor effects and go for a big one. Once the law got its act together, I succeeded beyond my expectations.
When the gray-painted buttock turned up amid the stone work in a wall in New Mexico, and the feds began to assemble the information about the pink forearm in Kansas and the golden thigh in Oklahoma, the penny finally dropped.
SERIAL KILLER AT WORK, the headlines screamed, at the mildest. “Psychologists claim color choices for body parts show unhealthy fixations.” A good way to say nothing at all and still seem to know something.
Before I’m done, they will find that I will use every color of the rainbow. I wonder what THAT will tell them?
* * * *
They located the last bits of Ben Craddock after nine months (ironic timing, that); they have put them together and buried them, with suitable ceremonies. Craddock’s widow is
quoted as saying that she will personally find and eliminate his killer. Her photo shows a dumpy little woman with a pile of fuzzy hair and a thin-lipped mouth. I would wager she is a shrew.
Her claim strikes me as hilariously funny. If the law enforcement agencies of five states, plus the feds, haven’t been able to put together even so much as a psychological profile, how does this silly little woman expect to do it?
Still, her attitude has spurred me to action again. I have chosen another target—this will be my fifth, although four of the others were wasted efforts, principally because of the ineptitude of the officers and investigators involved. This one will be my chef d’oeuvre, the masterwork that will set the tone for whatever comes after it.
I will abduct Mrs. Craddock. This will tell everyone what is happening and who is doing it, without in any way endangering me in my true persona. To that end, I have begun studying her habits, which is not difficult, as she lives only a half hour distant, in a town readily accessible via the Interstate. I had familiarized myself with the place while stalking her husband.
My plans for her are vague, at the moment, although I am more and more inclined to gild her entire body, as Goldfinger did that bimbo in one of the James Bond movies. Watching her suffocate will be a pleasure that I have not, so far, enjoyed.
Both husband and wife being painted will create a certain symmetry, although I do not intend to dismember her. Scattering those bits and pieces about the map became a bit dangerous at times. I will not risk it again.
* * * *
Celeste Craddock is a creature of habit. I would have guessed that, if I had taken the trouble. She is actually inviting her own destruction, it seems, going to work at seven-thirty, coming home punctually at five-thirty, visiting the grocery (always the same one) on Tuesday afternoons after work, never later than a quarter to six. Except for a visit to her married daughter on Sunday afternoons (predictable, as is everything she does), she has not varied her routine by more than five minutes in the two weeks I have watched her.