Jerry came out onto the front porch, and handed the keys of the car to the sheriff. “Have somebody bring it back out later,” he said flatly.
The sheriff nodded and took the keys. Jay Neal lifted open the rear door of the station wagon.
Jerry went back inside, climbed the stairs quietly, and stood at the window of his own room, to watch the station wagon back slowly out of the driveway; he hurried to his grandmother’s room, made sure that she was asleep, and then peered between the curtains to see Margaret cross the Styx for the last time.
Then he sat in the chair at the foot of his grandmother’s bed, and rocked slowly for the better part of an hour. His grandmother slept soundly. Once when she turned suddenly, she knocked a pillow to the floor; when Jerry came around the bed to retrieve it, he found that it had fallen atop a small paperbound book, called The True Believer’s Guide to Dreams and Their Correct Interpretation. It was printed on coarse porous paper and many passages had been underlined in violet ink.
This puzzled him until he recalled that Ginny Darrish had sat there the day before, and very probably it had dropped out of her purse.
He went back to his chair, turned on a small lamp on his grandmother’s dresser. Hoping to forget for a few moments what had happened that afternoon, he began to read.
Somewhat later, Evelyn Larkin woke slowly. Jerry had dreaded this, and by her sudden choking whimper, he knew the moment she remembered that her granddaughter was dead. He said nothing while she wept, but continued to stare at the page, though tears in his own eyes blurred the small paragraphs.
After a while Evelyn left off, and drew up in the bed. In a shaking small voice, she said: “What are you reading, Jerry?”
He didn’t look up from the book. “It’s a book about dreams. It tells you what they mean. Ginny Darrish left it here yesterday I guess, by mistake.”
“I had a dream just now,” said Evelyn sadly. “I dreamed that Margaret got married. Even though she was still just a little girl, and fourteen’s not old enough to get married.”
Jerry looked up briefly at his grandmother but said nothing.
“Read me what it says in that book, Jerry. What does it mean when you dream about a wedding?”
Jerry flipped through quickly to the back of the book and found the correct entry. “ ‘Wedding—’ ” he read:
“ ‘Dreaming of a wedding is very unlucky; it is a sure forerunner of grief and disappointment. Death and marriage represent one another. For the sick to dream they are married, or that they celebrate their weddings, is a sign of death, for it signifies separation from her or his companions...’ ” On the last sentence his voice cracked:
“ ‘The dead do not keep company with the living.’ ”
“But Margaret’s already dead,” said Evelyn faintly, “so why would I dream about a wedding since she’s already dead?”
Jerry made no reply.
“Somebody killed Margaret, didn’t they, Jerry? Margaret didn’t just fall off the bridge and drown, did she?” “No, Grandma,” said Jerry reluctantly, “somebody killed her. But we don’t know who, and we don’t know why.” His voice was anguished.
“I know who did it,” said Evelyn calmly.
Jerry looked up: “What?”
“I know who killed Margaret.”
“Grandma—”
“When I dreamed that Margaret got married, I dreamed the whole ceremony, Jerry. I dreamed that you were up there at the altar giving her away, and I dreamed that Annie-Leigh Hooker and Belinda Hale were the two bridesmaids, and I was sitting there on the front row. But I couldn’t see the man that Margaret was supposed to be marrying. He had his back to me, and I couldn't see his face. And then we all went out of the church, and we watched her get in the back of the car, but we didn’t throw rice. We just watched Margaret climb in the back of the car all by herself, and then it drove away, and Margaret was beating on the back window trying to get out, and calling for me to come get her, and I wanted to go, Jerry, and I was about to go, but then I got stopped by the groom. He was standing right next to me, and it was Nathan Redfield. Margaret was marrying Nathan Redfield, and Ben Redfield was the best man, and Margaret got driven away in that big car of theirs. There wasn’t anybody driving and Margaret was beating on the back window trying to get out. You don’t have to look it up in that book to tell me what that dream means. It means that Nathan Redfield killed my little girl.”
“Grandma,” said Jerry softly, “I don’t even know if he knew Margaret. I don’t think that Nathan Redfield—” He broke off. “I mean we just don’t know who—”
“I’ll tell you how else I know,” said Evelyn, interrupting her grandson. She sat straight up in the bed, resting against the headboard, with pillows to brace her: “Now listen, Jerry, Nathan’s been on to us so much lately about that loan, and there’s no call for it. I know we’re behind a little, but he doesn’t go after other people like that. He doesn’t walk up to them every time they step foot in the front door of the CP&M. Then, right the day after Margaret disappears—and Margaret is lying face down at the bottom of the Styx—Nathan Redfield comes up to me and starts demanding payment and talking about proceedings. He ought to be writing us a letter or something, not badgering us like he is. So something’s wrong, and what’s wrong is that Nathan Redfield killed Margaret.”
“Grandma, Just because Nathan’s on to us about that loan—and it’s not as if we weren’t behind on it a little— that’s no reason to go off saying that he’s the one who killed Margaret.”
“But that loan’s not all, Jerry.”
“What else is there?”
“Nathan Redfield used to look at Margaret... all the time. He thought I didn’t notice it, but I did, every time Margaret and I went in the bank together. Oh, he never said anything to her when I was around, he leered at her and stared at her and his filthy thoughts were right there on his face for all the world to see. Margaret was only fourteen, Jerry, and Nathan Redfield was staring at her.” “But looking isn’t... looking’s not a crime, Grandma, and you were probably just imagining it anyway. I never noticed him... looking at her.”
She ignored Jerry’s objection: “He let it build up in him till he did something... till he killed her! Maybe she... said no to him. And he killed her, and threw her off the bridge into the river. And then the very next morning when I’m in the bank, he’s practically on top of me demanding his money and trying to take this farm away from us. Because if he took this house away from us, where would we go? I’d be ashamed to show my face in Babylon. He knows that. He knows we’d go away somewhere before we went on welfare.”
“Why would Nathan Redfield care where we went?” “ ‘Cause he killed Margaret,” cried Evelyn with exasperation: “As long as we’re around here there’ll be suspicion, because I know what he did. We go, and who cares what happened to Margaret, and who cares who did it? Jerry, there was a fishhook in my little girl’s month. Your mama and daddy went out on that river and they never came back, and now Margaret’s gone and drowned in it —I wish I could just roll over and die, and have done with it.” Evelyn’s feverishness had subsided into an exhausted whimper.
Jerry closed the book in his lap, and dropped it beneath the chair. He sat silent, thinking.
“I know I’m right,” said Evelyn quietly, “and you will too, if you’ll just stop and think about it. I know it and I feel it. When Nathan was still in high school, couldn’t have been more than sixteen, he got those two girls in trouble up in Alabama, and they lost their jobs at that gun factory. There were probably ethers that I just didn’t hear about. His daddy covered up for him till he just got disgusted, and then finally made Nathan go in the Air Force. And then there was the time he nearly beat the poor little Blaine girl to death in a ditch after a football game.”
“Grandma, you just cain’t go off and accuse a man of something like this without proof, and we don’t have any proof.” Jerry recalled the stories about Nathan with some discomfort.
“
We’ll get it! We’ll talk to Ted Hale and he’ll get proof. Police have ways of getting proof!”
Jerry had risen from his chair, and now sat at the foot of his grandmother’s bed. She leaned forward precipitously, and grabbed his arm: “Don’t you let this go, Jerry!” she hissed. “Margaret’s dead, and there’s no sense to it, and nobody cares but you and me. Nathan Redfield killed your sister and put her in the Styx and be wants us to get out of here so he can live with his conscience. But you and I won’t let him. I want him locked up. I want to see that man as dead as Margaret was when you laid her on the riverbank. I would give every penny I had left in this world to see him out on that lawn with a fishhook caught in the roof of his bleeding mouth!”
On Saturday night, Dr. Everage examined Margaret’s body thoroughly with the assistance of the county coroner, who drove up from Pensacola at Sheriff Hale s request.
By midnight, the two physicians had agreed that Margaret Larkin was the victim of a homicide. The superficial cuts over her back and belly had been inflicted before her death. The bicycle to which her body had been secured had served to weight her down; the black impure water of the Styx had filled her lungs and Margaret Larkin had drowned.
“It’s real nasty,” said the county coroner: “I don’t think I have ever seen a body tied to a bicycle and dumped in the river. You have any idea who did it, Sheriff?”
The sheriff shook his head no. “It’s not the kind of crime we get a lot of around here. We get Saturday night poker murders on the north side of town, but you always know who did it, and nobody tries to keep it a secret. There’s people screaming, and there’s twenty-five witnesses, but I never got anything like this. And of course nobody’s ever killed a fourteen-year-old girl before.”
“Well,” said the county coroner, “maybe you ought to have a little talk with the father.”
“Jim Larkin’s dead,” said Hale, surprised: “He died in the Styx too, about fifteen years ago.”
“No,” said the county coroner, while Dr. Everage stood by tight-lipped, “the father of the baby that she was carrying. This girl was four months pregnant.”
Chapter 16
After the county coroner had filed his report with the sheriff's office, Margaret’s body was released. It was taken to the funeral parlor on the south side of town.
Ginny Darrish proved herself invaluable during this difficult time. Early Sunday morning, she drove out to the farm, and chose the clothing that Margaret would be buried in. At the funeral home she picked out a decent but inexpensive casket, and specified the minimum of services for the poor murdered girl. Later, when Margaret had been laid out, embalmed, cosmetized, and dressed, she returned to decide for a closed or open coffin.
“Well,” said Ginny, staring down into the face of the corpse, billowed in blue satin: “She doesn’t look bad, but she doesn’t look like she died much of a natural death either. Maybe we just better keep the top down.”
In the afternoon, Jerry drove his grandmother through town. Those passing on the sidewalk recognized the car, stared a moment at the weeping woman inside, and then turned away in sympathetic embarrassment. The morning edition of the Pensacola paper had carried notice of the murder, but the small article had none of the detail with which the gossip had already embellished it.
Ed Geiger as usual was the fount of much of the information, but he fairly gushed on this occasion. It was he, after all, who had discovered Margaret Larkin’s corpse. He sat highly visible on his front porch all of Sunday. For many hours he entertained a fluctuating audience with a description, more detailed with each iteration, of bow he had pulled Margaret Larkin up from the bottom of the Styx with a rod and reel. And all that sunny hot afternoon, the only time he paused in his storytelling was when the Larkins’ station wagon passed the house. Geiger stood clumsily out of the swing and leaned over the front rail to wave mournfully at Jerry, who waved solemnly back.
The half dozen persons on the porch were silent for a moment, and then Geiger continued: “I thought it had snagged on a shelf, a little shelf of rocks, so I jerked the line a couple times, to fry and get it loose...”
At the other end of the porch, Annie-Leigh Hooker was installed in the glider, and after people were finished with Ed Geiger, they turned to his niece for the background of Margaret’s strange disappearance on Thursday. Annie- Leigh knew the facts, and could recount the theories that had circulated. In her own way, Annie-Leigh was thought as reliable and important a witness as Geiger, for she was known to have been intimate with the dead girl. Her pronouncements were edged with melancholy, that her best friend in all the world had been mauled and ripped and drowned by a psychopathic killer who was very likely still walking among us.
In the dim, heavily air-conditioned chapel of the funeral home, where flowers for Margaret were already arriving, Evelyn Larkin sat and wept. She and Jerry huddled in the front row of folding gray chairs, while the coffin sat absurdly large and grandiose before them.
“I’m gone take you home now,” said Jerry after a quarter of an hour,
“We’re not going to leave Margaret here,” Evelyn sobbed. “We cain’t leave Margaret in here alone tonight.”
“I’m taking you home,” said Jerry soothingly. “Margaret’s not gone be alone. I’m staying here till midnight—Ginny'll be at the house with you. Then Warren will be here from midnight on. He asked if he could. Margaret won’t be left alone, Grandma. We’ll take care of her.”
Evelyn nodded. She stood, brushed her hand tenderly across the lid of the closed coffin, and then turned away. Jerry led her from the room.
Ginny Darrish spent all that evening at the blueberry farm, receiving visitors in Evelyn’s stead. Everyone expressed his astonishment and wonder at the manner of Margaret’s death, and shook his head slowly over what must be Evelyn Larkin’s condition upstairs.
When the last mourning guest had gone, Ginny went upstairs and sat by the side of Evelyn’s bed. Margaret’s grandmother was awake but dazed, and spoke incoherently. Ginny made her be quiet, and then began to talk softly of those who had been downstairs, and what they had said. She related all the stories that the condolence bearers had told of Margaret, and these inconsequential anecdotes did something to comfort Evelyn. Ginny sat and rocked in the darkness long after Evelyn had fallen asleep and refused Jerry’s invitation to spend the night in Margaret’s room.
“I'm gone stay here with your grandma, just in case she wakes up,” whispered Ginny, “and besides, don’t you know that it’d be bad luck to sleep in Margaret’s bed before she’s been buried?”
Jerry did not press, but returned to his own room, where foe fell asleep heavily, and did not dream.
At the funeral home, Nina’s eldest son kept night watch; he slept with his head on the reception desk. A transistor radio, at lowest volume, rested close to his ear.
In the chapel, Warren Perry remained alone with Margaret’s coffin. He had pulled open the thickly lined nylon drapes so that the mercury lights in the parking lot shone on the lid of the coffin, making the powder blue shine a metallic silver. To keep awake, Warren played hymns on the small pipe organ in the corner; a small green-shaded lamp illumined the hymnal, and between verses he stared over at the silvered coffin. Not until dawn did he raise the lid.
In the harsh morning light, he was perplexed by the aspect of Margaret’s body: It seemed smaller than he had remembered, shrunken though not shriveled, as if some of the essence had been evenly extracted from it during embalming. He was glad as he dropped the lid back that he had looked: The thing inside had seemed not Margaret at all, but a faulty replica, like a straw figure to be burnt at Halloween—there would be no regret at slipping that husk into the earth. The question remained however: Where was Margaret?
The funeral was held at nine. The Baptist preacher read a short sermon after a single hymn, and then Ginny Darrish spoke a few words about Margaret. Jerry and Evelyn sat in the front row, hardly a yard away from the coffin, and did not even look around to s
ee who attended.
Ginny had made her husband come, and this large man twisted uncomfortably in the last row—Charles Darrish had no liking for funerals. The sheriff had sent Belinda to represent him, and she showed with five of her six cheerleaders, all in their black skirts and their black blazers—and they whispered to one another what a lucky thing it was that the school colors were gold and black. Other of Margaret’s classmates were in attendance, friends of Evelyn’s, and the man who owned the gas station where Jerry was occasionally employed. Annie-Leigh Hooker and Ed Geiger sat directly behind Jerry and Evelyn. Nina the Redfields' maid, was the only black present. It was a respectable turnout, and though all admitted that they had wanted to have a look at Margaret, they agreed it was best, in the case of murder, to keep the coffin closed.
The Babylon municipal cemetery was located on an old street on the eastern edge of town. The houses nearby were dilapidated and inhabited by workers in the ribbon factory, Babylon’s sole industry. The cemetery had been established about 1875, but, none of the bodies interred dated from that time—all the cemetery’s first-fruits had floated to the surface in the great flood of 1929, The grounds were wildly overgrown; massive cedars and live oaks had sprung up in the midst of family plots, and knocked tombstones awry; wild strawberries—nobody ate them—grew in the pathways. Honeysuckle and trumpet vines spread luxuriant along the rusting iron fences.
The Larkins had a family plot, bought many years before by Evelyn’s husband in a time of relative prosperity. The place was marked by an ugly pink marble needle, inscribed with the family name. There he was buried, and beside his grave was the cenotaph that mourned Margaret and Jerry’s parents. Margaret was to be laid immediately adjoining this, leaving room for only two more graves within the low concrete curbing.
Those who were curious about the strange death of Margaret Larkin but who had not felt sufficiently close to the family to appear at the funeral home were at the cemetery, half concealed by the surrounding thick trees and foilage. Conspicuously present were the sheriff, his two deputies, and Dr. Everage.
Cold moon over Babylon Page 10