They closed their eyes and listened to the muted wailing of harmonicas, the squeals of Drop the Handkerchief, the steady ping of arrows that found their target in the archery set. Behind them the little white church stood against a starry sky.
Mark yawned. “Wonderful air. What’s the outlook for the coal?”
“Bright. We may even run to a strip of carpet for the middle aisle. . . . You know what those young devils did?”
“Which ones?”
“Floyd and Pee Wee Peck. He’s a summer kid from the hotel, father’s in the oil business. He and Floyd have that lemonade stand, nickel a drink, but some of these old timers won’t spend a nickel for a drink. They go to the well, like they always did.”
“Hard luck.”
“Wait. They go to the well but there isn’t any bucket. Bucket, chain, and dipper, all gone. Do you think Floyd thought that one up himself?” Perley looked hopeful. “I’m afraid it sounds like Pee Wee, but I kind of wish it was Floyd.”
“It’s Floyd all over. What’s the outlook for the lemonade?”
“Two new batches. . . . Hey—something’s going on!”
They sat up. People were converging on the archery set, and a child was screaming shrilly. Perley struggled to his feet. “I hate that thing,” he said testily. “Had trouble with it before. Some fresh kid always acts up for the girls and shoots wild. Come on.”
They pushed their way through a crowd of women frantically counting children, and found Pansy. The illuminating flares beside the target hissed spitefully.
“Now what?” barked Perley. “Who got it this time?”
“It’s the Briggs child.” Pansy made soft, clucking sounds. “The one that just got over the whooping cough. But it’s only a scratch on her arm, Perley, she’s just frightened to death, that’s all. Poor little thing, and her first day out too.”
The Briggs child, a pale, unpleasant creature, lay languidly in her mother’s arms and permitted the application of iodine. A worried-looking clergyman had taken charge.
“Mr. Walters,” Pansy said, “here’s the sheriff now.”
The Reverend Mr. Walters corked his little bottle and smiled gently. “I always carry iodine to church affairs,” he said. “Who hurt you, Maisie?”
A dozen voices took it up, and the guilty name rolled out like a chant. Nick Sutton, Nick Sutton, Nick Sutton did it. Mark stood back and watched the eager hands that pulled and pushed Nick Sutton forward. He felt as if he were watching a small but hideously perfect race riot, and he expected to see some terrified dolt who would eventually be led away by his embarrassed parents. But it wasn’t like that.
Nick Sutton was a frail youth, probably under twenty, obviously better born and bred than the sweating farm boys who were turning him in. He stumbled forward and steadied himself on the arm of a girl. Mark saw that he was lame and that he was trembling with rage, not fear.
“It’s only a scratch, Nick,” Perley said, “but it could have been worse. How come it happened?”
Sutton glared at the ring of hostile faces. “Somebody pushed my arm, and it wasn’t an accident either. Somebody wanted me to miss and gave me a deliberate push. Don’t ask me why because I don’t know. I guess you’d call it clean country fun.”
“He’s been drinking,” Mrs. Briggs shrilled. “I smelt it on his breath when he put my baby in my arms!”
Sutton shook off the girl’s restraining hand. “Drinking,” he said bitterly. “Two Martinis three hours ago. If you want to smell liquor around here why don’t you go over to where those—never mind.” He turned to Perley and shrugged. “Do I get bail?”
Perley grinned. “Come along, son. You and me are going to confiscate this pretty little game and bust it into matchwood.” They wrenched the target from its post and moved off, the girl following. The women closed in on the Briggs mother and child, and the men drifted away. Somebody laughed. The fun was all over.
Mark felt a tug at his sleeve. Floyd, reeking of lemons, stood at his side. He had a smaller boy in tow.
“This is Pee Wee,” he said. “We want to tell you something. Look.” He held out five arrows. “The one with the kind of bend is the one that got Maisie, but there’s no blood on it.”
“Somebody wiped it clean,” sighed Pee Wee.
“But look,” Floyd went on. “Count ’em, Mr. East. Five. There ought to be six. Where’s the other one?” There was a rim of sugar around Floyd’s eager mouth, and his eyes glistened.
“Oh,” Mark said heartlessly, “that’ll be over in the tall grass. Want me to help you search?”
The boys exchanged looks. “Nope,” said Floyd. “You won’t find it. Want me to warn Pop?”
Mark jingled the coins in his pocket. “I’ll warn him myself, later. I’m going to look him up in a few minutes.” He looked at his watch. Nine o’clock. “Who is Nick Sutton, Floyd? Live around here?”
Pee Wee took over importantly. “He lives in New York, like me. He’s at the Mountain House too, for the summer. He’s in love.”
“Well, that seems to cover everything. Now suppose you tell me why you’re so upset about the sixth arrow.”
Floyd plunged into a long and garbled recital. Nick, who was the best shot in town, paid for six arrows, ten cents, and lots of people hung around to watch him shoot. Maybe his arm did get pushed. It must of. Nick never missed before. Well he got the bull’s-eye with the first two, and the third one got Maisie. And did she holler. Everybody hollered. When they hollered like that Nick was scared and he dropped the other three on the ground and picked Maisie up. “I,” said Floyd, “would of left her lay.”
“I,” said Pee Wee, “am the person that remembered to pick up the ones he dropped. It’s a good set and people were tramping all over the place like crazy. But there was only two of them. Right away somebody had swiped the other. Quick as a flash, just like that, somebody had swiped it on me.”
“Don’t that mean anything?” begged Floyd.
“Souvenir hunter,” Mark said easily. “Like me. Will you boys sell me the five? It’ll be all right with your father, Floyd. He’s going to break them up anyway.”
They struck a bargain, and the boys returned to their lemonade. In spite of the extra dollar, they didn’t look happy. They looked as if he had failed them, and he knew it wasn’t because of the money. He fingered the points of the five arrows and began to wonder. Pre-war, and sharp. He moved off to find Perley.
The sheriff was over by the church woodpile, axing the target into next year’s kindling. He was morosely watched by Sutton and the girl. She was Roberta Beacham, Perley said
“Miss Beacham’s one of our summer visitors,” he said. “I’ve known her a long time. She was standing right by Nick and she didn’t see any shoving. It must have come from the other side, only nobody remembers who was there.”
Roberta was both pretty and sarcastic. If Nick said somebody shoved him, why then somebody did, she declared. But why all the fuss? Nobody was dead.
“My father gave this contraption to the church for their picnic last year,” she said. “Three kids got half-killed then, and nobody cared. Why all the fuss now?”
Perley looked harassed. “That Briggs woman! . . . Give me those arrows,” he said to Mark.
“Not now.”
Roberta gave Mark a long stare. “What do you want with them?”
“I’m making a collection,” he said.
The two nearest lanterns flickered and went out. Perley relighted one with a candle stub from his pocket and doggedly went on with his work. He was making a chore of it. Nick Sutton watched grimly.
“I’m going down town,” he said suddenly. “With your permission, Mr. Wilcox.”
“You don’t need my permission,” Perley said mildly. “I just took you away to keep your face from getting scratched.”
“I’m going down town,” Nick repeated. “And if Mrs. Briggs wants to smell my breath when I come back all she has to do is open any window in her house. On the street side. Coming Ro
berta?”
“For two lemon sodas,” Roberta said calmly. “And a moonlight swim. Wait a minute though. I’ve got to get something out of the Sunday school room.” She talked over her shoulder as she walked away. “The chef up at the hotel deviled about a thousand eggs for us, and I swore I wouldn’t forget the hamper. I hid it in a cupboard.”
Mark leaned against a tree and looked up at the sky. The pale yellow moon was in complete agreement with the stars. He lit a cigarette, gave one to Nick, and wondered what would happen to him if he drank two lemon sodas. He counted back fifteen years to the last time his night bathing had been performed in anything but a porcelain tub.
“Where do you swim?” he asked.
“Hotel pool.”
They smoked quietly and listened to the diminishing sounds. The Covered Dish was calling it a day. The lanterns burned low, and the harmonicas grew silent. One by one the women drifted down the hillside, bundling their crumpled aprons and tablecloths, dragging fretful children, and telling each other that tomorrow would be another scorcher. Their tired voices floated back.
The Reverend Mr. Walters moved from tree to tree with a long pole, extinguishing lights. Two men took the trestle tables apart and carried them to a waiting truck.
“Where the hell’s Roberta?” Nick said to nobody.
Mark watched Perley as he reduced the last scrap of target to a handful of splinters and snapped the bow. Funny, he said to himself, how men get a kick out of destruction. Those guys over there are knocking those tables down as if they were alive. Even old Perley swings his ax like a headsman. He shuffled his arrows thoughtfully.
Something blew across his consciousness as lightly as the night wind across the clover, but it wasn’t pleasant. He saw the little colored boy paying out his hoard of coin for scraps; he heard the eager voices that turned Nick Sutton in. He told himself to stop that. “I’m tired,” he said softly.
“I say,” Nick said suddenly, “do you hear anything?”
They listened. Faintly, and yet nearby, someone was calling for help.
The Reverend Mr. Walters heard it too. He put down his pole and hurried toward them. The men at the tables turned and stared before they too moved silently and swiftly across the grass. Perley looked at Mark with a question in his eyes.
“Who is it?” Mark asked. “Where’s it coming from?”
“That’s coming from the church,” Walters said. “But everybody’s gone home. I don’t understand it. Everybody’s gone home.”
Perley went first, and Mark followed. “Not this time,” he said under his breath. “Not tonight.” But when Nick Sutton tried to push ahead he held him back. “Let the old men do it,” he said.
A dim light burned in a room to the left of the vestibule. Roberta’s voice came out to them, distressed and urgent. They shuffled and crowded through the door, and someone turned on the ceiling lights.
Mark saw the rows of small, varnished chairs, the wall maps of the Holy Land, the colored lithographs of shepherds and sheep, the glass-enclosed bookcase with its neat shelves of shabby books; all the old familiar paraphernalia of a God-fearing childhood, even to the lingering smell of black shoe polish. He saw Roberta Beacham bending over something dark in a far corner. She turned a frightened face.
“It’s Miss Rayner,” she said. “She seems to be hurt but she won’t tell me anything about it. She’s—there’s blood.”
They crowded close. A frail little woman in thin black silk crouched on one of the small chairs, moaning softly. She clung to Roberta’s hand. “If you’ll just take me back to the hotel,” she beseeched. “I’ll be all right when I get in my own bed. I don’t want all these men around. You shouldn’t have called them. Send them away.”
“It’s only Mr. Walters,” Roberta said. “And Mr. Wilcox.” Her eyes begged the others to stand back. “I can’t get you out to a car all by myself, Miss Rayner. I need somebody to help me. Nick’s here too. You don’t mind Nick?”
Miss Rayner flinched. “Nicholas? Not Nicholas Sutton? I thought I saw the sheriff arrest him.”
Perley coughed genteelly behind his hand.
“There wasn’t anything to arrest him for, Miss Rayner. That was just a little bit of foolishness. Now, suppose you tell us what’s the trouble. The Reverend here has something for cuts, that is if you cut yourself. You tell us what’s wrong, and we’ll fix you up and get you back to the hotel in three shakes of a lamb’s tail.” He put his hands under her elbows and lifted her up. She gave a little scream of pain and fell against him.
“Take her on the other side, Mark,” Perley said. “She can’t stand. What have you been doing to yourself, Miss Rayner? Did you have a fall?”
“She won’t tell you,” Roberta said. “She wouldn’t tell me. I’ve been in here for ages, trying to make her talk, but she won’t. Miss Rayner, you’ve got to tell Mr. Wilcox. It might be serious!”
Miss Rayner gave a wry smile. “Such a fuss,” she said. She looked doubtfully from face to face. “Well,” she admitted, “well, maybe I did have a little fall.”
The story came out slowly. Yes, it was a fall, but you might call it more of a stumble. It was a root, or something, that tripped her when she was running. And there was nothing funny about an old lady running, either. It was serious, and she wouldn’t say another word until those men left. And if they didn’t leave at once and she got blood poisoning it would be their fault.
Her little heart-shaped face crinkled like a crying child’s. Why did they look at her like that, as if they didn’t believe her? Why couldn’t Nicholas Sutton bring his car up the hill? If he could do that, she’d try to walk out to it. She didn’t want to be carried by anybody and she didn’t want to talk any more. If they’d just get her back to the hotel, the maid on her floor would know what to do. She looked up at Mark. “You may take my arm,” she said surprisingly. “I’m inclined to trust strangers.”
He shifted his arrows and obliged.
Nick, smiling broadly for the first time, limped off to get his car, and Perley herded the other men through the door. Their laughter, sly and raucous, echoed in the vestibule.
Mr. Walters, his thin face anxious and confused, hovered over the wounded member of his summer flock. “I don’t understand your remark about blood poisoning,” he said. “I believe Miss Beacham also mentioned blood. I’m—I’m afraid I don’t see any.”
Miss Rayner ignored him and steadied herself against Mark’s arm. She touched the sheaf of arrows. “Only five?” she said. “Couldn’t you find the other one?”
“No,” Mark said. “Why?”
“Because I couldn’t find it either, and I looked everywhere. . . . I think that’s what hit me.” She enjoyed the tributary gasp. “Now I’ll tell you the rest of it,” she said.
She’d been watching the boys at the archery set. Very interesting, and very instructive in its way. The country boys, for all their talk about squirrels and foxes, were sadly outshone by the children from the cities. You so often found that, didn’t you? With her own eyes she had seen young Peck give an imitation of William Tell, using little Josephine Beacham and a lemon, which everyone knows is smaller than an apple and much more difficult. Then Nicholas Sutton, poor boy, had made that dreadful mistake with the adenoidal child.
“Not adenoids, Miss Rayner,” Perley corrected patiently. “That’s the aftermath of whooping cough.”
“Call it what you like,” Miss Rayner said, “but I do think she was a mistake. And if you want to know what happened you mustn’t interrupt.” She went on to tell how she’d walked away from the crowd because people were being coarse, and the next thing she knew something struck her. With force and accuracy. She gave them a grim, triumphant look.
“You were doubtful about the blood,” she said to Mr. Walters. “Well, here it is.” She bent over with difficulty and raised her long, full skirt. The floor was wet and red around her feet. “It’s my leg. It was an arrow, and it went through—everything. You can see.” She showed them a cut i
n the silk.
“Miss Rayner!” Roberta was aghast. “We’ve got to get you to a doctor!”
“I made a tourniquet with my handkerchief,” said Miss Rayner. “Now I’ll wait for that car.”
Perley frowned and looked unhappily at Mark. “Where were you?” Mark asked. “How far from the crowd and how long ago?”
Miss Rayner couldn’t remember time and distance, and they didn’t press her. Her face was like parchment, and her hands were trembling. She’d had her little hour in the limelight and now she was querulous and fretful.
“How can I remember?” she complained. “I don’t carry a watch. And if you think I felt like marking the spot with an X then you’re very silly. I tell you I was just walking along, and there was nobody near me. Nobody that I could see. I was walking over by that stone wall because it seemed cooler there. And then it happened. And I ran and fell, because I’m too old for that kind of thing. And I used my handkerchief because I do have a little sense, and I sat down and rested. Then I came in here. I knew people would have to come in for their baskets and things, but when I got here they’d all gone. At least I didn’t see anyone until Roberta—Roberta—”
Perley cleared his throat. “Now, now. And you looked for the arrow? Before you came in here you looked for the arrow, didn’t you?”
“Certainly. But I couldn’t find it.” Then she said a surprising thing. “I didn’t even see it, you know. I mean when it struck me. I heard it swishing through the air, that’s all, and it must have been an arrow because one is missing.” She paused and frowned. “Do you think it could have had a string on it?”
“A string?” Perley looked bewildered. “Now what would a string—”
“Here’s Nick,” Roberta said, “and about time, too.”
Time to Die Page 2