by Gil Brewer
“Let’s skip it,” I said. I climbed behind the wheel and slammed the door. He fastened his hands on the door, and stared at me. He was breathing sharply.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” he said. “Didn’t think it meant that much to you.”
“Let’s drop that tack.”
He cleared his throat. “That isn’t what I wanted to talk about.”
I waited. Some people walked by the car. It was a large cemetery, shaded by towering palms and live oaks drooping with Spanish moss. I didn’t feel in the mood for talk about anything, especially with Frank. I watched Leda get in their car parked ahead of me on the drive. She also was in black, with a veil. She looked anything but in mourning; the dress was tight and glistened in patches of sunlight.
“I want to speak about my wife,” Frank said. “For three days she hasn’t been home. Half the night she’s away.” His face reddened up, now, and his hands clenched nervously on the door. He spoke louder. “I want you to leave her alone. You hear? You may have known her once. But that’s changed. You hear?”
“Fine.”
Several people standing on the grass beside the drive turned and stared. Frank didn’t seem to notice.
“Can’t you take care of your own wife?” I said.
“She tells me where she’s been,” he said. “I won’t have it. I told her so. It’s to stop as of now.” Again he cleared his throat; he was highly nervous. I had to hold myself in, talking to him, because I wanted to hit him. I wanted to break his nose so he wouldn’t have any. The dream didn’t frighten me any more, much, and all I wanted to do was hurt the man. Not in a dream, either.
He said, “She’s been with you all that time. She hasn’t been near the house. I hardly see her. I won’t have it!”
I shrugged and started the engine.
“Shut that off,” he said.
I let it run.
“She’s posing for you. Naked, you hear? My wife. People will talk.”
“They sure will with you bellowing.”
He tried to calm down, but his voice was full of emotion and it carried through the silence of the grounds.
“She’s paying me for the work,” I said. “I need the money. Don’t be so damned shallow.”
“You heard me, Eric. I want it stopped. I don’t care what she’s told you. She’s—she’s highly emotional, excitable.” He stared at me for a long moment, his face working, his eyes very bright. “That’s all,” he said. “And don’t come around the house. I don’t want to see you. Just remember that—and what I’ve said.”
I noticed Leda coming toward us from their car. She was smiling and her every movement was provocative in the early afternoon sunlight.
Frank turned his back on me and walked rapidly up to her. He took her arm and I heard him say, “Come along, dear.” They went to their car. Quite a few people had watched the little episode and I guessed not a few had heard some of what Frank said.
I went on back to the barn.
Leda had been with me for three days. She came early in the morning and remained. We swam together, and I was doing a large work of her in clay, full-figure. The pose was full, feet spread slightly apart, hands clasped behind her back, head thrown back with that wealth of auburn hair tossed and tumbled by a wind. It would be very beautiful, but not so beautiful as she. I was so much in love with her, wanted her so badly, that nothing Frank could say bothered me. Nothing anybody could say. She was mine and that’s the way it was. It seemed we could never still the hot flame that had grown during the time of separation. We tried. The posing was difficult, the work difficult—because one or the other of us could only stand it for a short time before we weakened and took to the couch.
Those three days had been an orgy and they gave promise of an endless procession to come. And the work came, too, it felt good to work. And I didn’t dream. Leda mentioned the dream a lot, but we didn’t dwell on it.
I hadn’t known she’d told my brother all that she had. But thinking about it, I saw it was the best way.
She’d always been open about everything. Perhaps a little too much so.
There was a place not too far from the barn on the main road called the Sea Breeze Drive-in. I stopped there for coffee and a hamburger once in a while. Norma’s photography shop was nearby and it was necessary that we should eventually meet.
We did. Me with my coffee and Norma at the end of the line in her car, with a milk shake. She came over.
“Hey, Eric. You’re still alive.”
“Cut it out. I’ve been meaning to get around and see if you—”
“You can cut that out. Anyway, Lenny stops by. He’s told me all about everything. Gay old time, eh, Eric? Don’t let a chisel slip, will you?” She watched me. “You look pale, Eric.” When she walked away her hips flirted with the soft wind which came in over the Gulf.
Driving back to the barn, Lenny drove up and stopped me as I was turning into the sand road.
He was drunk, in his ubiquitous pink shirt.
“Going to town,” he said. He winked and showed me the singles, hitched one shoulder. “Wanta thank you for that there statue. Hit shore is a beaut. Got ’er in my bedroom, now.”
“Fine. Keep it up. It’ll get you someplace.”
“Whyn’t you come on over sometimes? Ain’t seen my new place, Eric. Hit’s different.”
“I’ll bet.”
He gunned the motor on his crimson fireball. “Well, gotta get goin’.” He winked again and went on off down the road.
Back at the barn I felt somehow flat, empty, washed out.
I walked into the studio and looked at the statue I was doing of Leda. It was taking a lot of clay, but she wanted it that way. “Of me, Eric. All the way—the way you feel it!” So she could see what I felt and what she’d really look like when I got around to working in the marble. Because usually they were smaller. It was a damned fine piece of work. I’d caught something of her force in the pose, her carelessness—her wantonness.
She’d probably be around soon. Suddenly I didn’t want to see her for a while. Thoughts of the funeral had lowered my spirits.
I went and got my swimming shorts, put them on, grabbed a towel, and headed for the Gulf. Maybe some salt water and sunshine would bring me around. God knows, something had to.
I walked on down the sand road and on over to the beach.
Chapter 16
It was dark by the time I returned to the barn. Coming down the sand road, I noticed a light lit in the studio and a large sedan parked in the road beside the barn. At first I didn’t recognize it, then I recalled seeing the same car parked in Frank’s drive when I first came home. His car. Must be Leda had come over and was waiting for me. It was likely she’d had a long wait. I’d spent the rest of the afternoon until now on the beach, thinking. The only conclusion I’d reached was that something had to be done.
Either I left the Cypress Landing, or Leda managed a divorce. One or the other, I preferred the latter but had about made up my mind to the former. Except that I had decided to fight. Half of the money from the family, half of the business, was mine. I had to have it because I needed it, was entitled to it. There were ways and I chose to find them. I’d been too easy going. I’d let things slide already, because of Leda. This was going to cease. Maybe it was hazy in my mind, but it was something to work on.
Entering the kitchen, I called, “Hello?”
No answer. Still in my swimming shorts, I tossed the towel over a chair. I was foggy. I’d fallen asleep out on the beach and slept for a long while. I pushed open the door leading into the studio.
It was very bright in there. I’d arranged electric fixtures so I could work at night. They were all turned on. What I saw wasn’t nice. But I only saw part of it at first.
The clay figure of Leda was smashed to a pulp. It had literally been torn down and trampled into a flattened mass on the floor. It was covered with a man’s footprints. Wire and wood jutted from the mangled clay. There wasn’t a sol
itary feature left.
Then my breath left me. On the floor by the couch was Frank, sprawled out. Beside him was the largest of the wooden mallets from the rack on the wall.
I didn’t breathe with the loud pumping of my heart. I went over and looked at Frank.
You didn’t need to look far to see he was dead. His head was smashed almost as badly as the clay. Blood covered him, the floor, the couch. Tufts of hair and blood clung to the wooden mallet.
For a long while my brain screamed nameless things. My ears rang from the blood in my head. I bent down, looked at Frank, stood, weaved around the floor.
He’d been wearing a white suit and he had been my brother for all my life up until the other day. So he was still my brother, really. I had hated him enough to kill him. But now I knew he’d still been my brother.
I went back, felt his hand. It was cold. The lights glared. But nothing sank in and it was crazy. Yet, it was true. My brother dead—murdered.
Like in the dream with the wooden mallet. Smashed. And if there was relief inside me, it was rapidly supplanted by a sharp, terrible fear. Days at the hospital rushed back, with Prescott seated at his desk, trying with all his might to tell me something I couldn’t believe. And now—what would Prescott say, do?
Frank’s eyes were half-closed and he still wore the remains of the adhesive across his nose. But his nose had been flattened for sure, now.
I held my hands out, stared at the trembling. I inspected them, not wanting to tell myself even what I searched for.
Then, slowly, it began growing inside me. It was very still in the barn. Outside the wind softly buffeted the roof and walls and if you listened hard enough you could hear the cars passing on the main road, and between the sound of the cars the faraway hiss of the Gulf against the beach.
Frank was murdered. It hadn’t happened just recently, either. He’d been dead for some time.
I tried to tell myself somebody had done it, maybe to frame me. Who had I seen since the funeral besides Norma, Leda, Lenny?
Nobody. I’d gone to a remote spot on the beach and stayed there till I’d returned. I’d seen nobody. And I had slept. I couldn’t remember dreaming. Maybe you didn’t remember dreaming when you really didn’t dream.
Stop it! It wasn’t pretty at all, this picture. . . . The husband comes to the sculptor’s studio, grows insanely jealous because of the nude statue of his wife who’s been seeing the sculptor regularly. He smashes the clay image and the brothers fight. During the fight the husband is killed with a wooden mallet, pounded to death, his head smashed to a pulp.
And I could almost hear a voice saying, “Yes, Eric Garth was a patient here. Yes, he dreamed all the time that he killed his brother with a wooden mallet.”
And all Cypress Landing knew how Frank and I felt toward each other; the fight we’d had on the eve of Mother’s funeral.
I heard the car coming down the road.
For an instant panic took hold. Then I realized I had to stay calm until I could think it out. That was a laugh. Think it out was a laugh. I grabbed for the wall switch and cut the lights, went into the kitchen and out the back door. I grabbed my towel from the chair in the kitchen as I passed.
It was Leda in the yellow convertible. Convertibles were in season. Death was in season. Death bloomed dark in the dooryard. Black petals.
Leda was out of the car and approaching me before I could reach her.
“Hello, darling. Give us a kiss.”
I kissed her. It was like kissing the trunk of a tree.
“What’s the matter, Eric? You all right?”
“Nothing. Been working. Thought I’d take a swim.” Then I cursed myself. That was the wrong thing to say. That could mean I’d been at the barn. “I’ve been walking for a while. Figured maybe the water’d do me good.”
“I know something that’ll do you more good.”
“Oh.”
“I came over earlier this afternoon. You weren’t here. Frank sure put up a row,” she said with a laugh. “I told him off. Told him I’d come over here whenever I chose. Hell with him.”
“Sure.” My throat was thick and my heart pounded like fury.
“Come on, let’s go inside. I want to look at myself.” She chuckled. “I mean what you’re doing, of course.”
“Don’t you want to come for a swim?”
“It’s getting cold,” she said.
“We could take a walk.”
“What’s the matter with you, anyway?” She cocked her head and looked at me, frowning. Then she let go and started for the barn. She wore a light coat over her dress and it bellowed with the wind.
You don’t know what to do at a time like that. You stand there and you can’t act. She paused halfway to the door and stared at my car parked on the other side of the barn. “Say,” she said. “I thought that was your car over there.” She pointed toward Frank’s sedan. She strolled toward it, hands thrust deeply into her coat pockets. Then she paused, turned, looked at me. “Frank’s here,” she said. “That’s his car.”
I couldn’t speak.
“Is he here now?”
“I don’t know. No. He’s not. I don’t know.”
She hurried to the kitchen door, flung it open. It was dark. She switched on the kitchen light by the door.
“Don’t go in there,” I said. “Come on, Leda!” I ran toward her. She went on through the kitchen into the studio. I reached her side just as she flicked on the switch. The studio was abruptly brilliant and she screamed.
She stood there looking down at Frank, or what was left of him, and screamed.
She turned to me, grabbed me, buried her face against my chest. “My God, Eric,” she said. “You’ve gone and done it. You’ve killed him!”
“Don’t say that!”
“Oh, my God!”
“Shut up.” I shook her. She was trembling. I shook her some more. Her eyes were large and round, the pupils jet-black.
“The dream. That crazy dream.” Her breath came in little sharp gasps. “You’ve got to tell me. Don’t try to hide it from me. Did you kill him, Eric?”
“No.”
She looked down at the body, twisted quickly back to me. “Murder,” she said. “It’s murder.”
She didn’t have to tell me that. Any hope I’d had of peace exploded and I knew what I was in for.
“The Hewitts,” she said. “Sure.” She looked at me. “Oh, Geez, murder.” She pulled me toward the kitchen door. “Quick, let’s get out of this room. I can’t stand it.”
“What about the Hewitts?”
“They had it in for Frank.”
I recalled what Clyde Burkette had said.
“They’re a backwoods family,” she said. “Frank gave them a big loan, then when they couldn’t keep the payments up, he settled for their land and home.”
“Has he done this before? To anyone else?”
She nodded. “Yes. But it’s all legal.”
“Sure.” I could feel the body lying there on the floor. Death was legal, too. Frank had found out just how legal. I couldn’t have done this. But Leda—what did she believe? Could I have done it? Or had somebody like the Hewitts?
We went into the kitchen. I turned off the lights in the studio and we stood there in the kitchen looking at each other. She was very pale and though I tried to think, my mind was a rushing blank. There were so many things that could be done, that had to be done—and quick. But I didn’t know what to do.
“You’ve got to run,” she said simply.
“Run? Are you crazy? That’d be admitting the worst. You know that.” I paced up and down the kitchen floor. If my world had been crashing around me before, it was nothing compared to how I felt now. More and more it did dawn on me how well I was implicated in this. And the more time I wasted the worse it became for me. Because had I done it? I didn’t think so, but the dream had been a strong thing.
“Yes,” she said. “But you don’t have to admit. It’s obvious what happened, Eric. It
would be to anybody. All right, say I believe you didn’t do this.” Suddenly she grew paler still and sank into a chair. Her lips were dry. I went to the cupboard and reached for the whiskey bottle. Back there by an old can of coffee was a forty-five automatic I’d treasured for years before the war. Only the other day I’d had it out, cleaned it, fired a few rounds down by the bayou. I knew the clip was full. The pistol’s black shape stood quietly in my mind as I closed the cupboard door.
I poured us each a drink, handed one to her. She gulped it solemnly.
“I’m going to call the sheriff,” I said. “You coming?”
“The sheriff?” she rose, faced me. “Don’t be a fool, Eric. That’s the worst thing you can do. They’ll pin this thing on you.”
I didn’t listen. Inside I cursed myself for feeling any relief over Frank’s death. But it was there, wrong or not wrong, and somehow I knew the dream was finished. But even with the dream gone, as I somehow knew it had to be with death, the real part of the dream was here with me now. I wondered how I’d get through it. Frank was dead now, and I knew it. So there could be no more dream. Only I knew the right thing to do, and I had to do it.
“Are you coming?” I said. There was no phone in the barn, the nearest being at a gas station on the main road. “Don’t forget,” I said. “If I’m in this, you are, too.”
“How can you say that?”
“Just want you to know. We’re in it, Leda. And it’s bad. It’s the worst of them all.” I stepped over to the door. “Come on,” I said. “We’ve wasted enough time already.”
“You can say you just came in, just found the body. We’ve got to think, Eric. You can’t go off without a plan. We’ve got to think.”
“I have.” I opened the door. “If you want to stay here, all right.”
She came with me.
I didn’t tell Burkette what it was all about, just said something had happened and I had to see him right away. I told him to come alone. Maybe he was the wrong one to call, but I knew him better than the police.
“Be right out, Eric. Couldn’t you tell me what’s up?”
“You’ll know soon enough.” I hung up and Leda and I went back to the barn.