by Larry Karp
Why on earth was her father so interested in that book? No members of their family were mentioned; if she’d read anything about Kleins or Bergschaffers, it would have jumped right off the page at her. And why had slimy Mr. Barton decided to bring Alan to their house in the first place? It didn’t make sense. None of it did.
The girl jumped as she heard the front door slam. She ran to the window, watched her father get into the car and drive away. Where was he going at almost eleven o’clock?
She walked back to the bed, sat, stared out her side window at the little expanse of roof over the parlor, saw the drainpipe. If Lew Gardiner could shinny up that pipe, why couldn’t she shinny down it.
Halfway to the window, she stopped and laughed. Who did she think she was, Nancy Drew? Her father was gone, her mother would be sound asleep down at the end of the hall. She grabbed a jacket from her closet, threw it on, then tiptoed down the stairs and out the front door.
***
The men outside Jerry Barton’s farm house were in a foul mood. Rafe Anderson peered through the dark at his wristwatch. “Christ Almighty, it’s near-on eleven-thirty,” he said. “Where the hell’s Jerry?”
Heads shook. There was a murmur like a cloud of bees, driven from their hive.
Klein, quiet till now, spoke. “He went out by Samson Curd’s place a few hours ago. He had a score he wanted to settle.”
“A score? With that foolish coon?” Luther Cartwright slapped his thigh. “What kind of score’s so important that we gotta stand out here like cigar-store Indians?”
Klein tried to sound casual. “He said Curd sassed him in town this afternoon. Got real uppity.”
“And that’s why he ain’t here?” Clay Clayton was furious. “Shit, Jerry must be dumber than Curd, runnin’ out tonight of all times to teach a lesson to a smart-mouth nigger. An’ now, we’re supposed to just stand around with our finger up our ass, waitin’ for him to get done? Fuck that and fuck Jerry. I say let’s just bust in the cellar door, get the stuff, and go ahead without him.”
Klein held up both hands. “Hold on, now. We break up Jerry’s cellar door and leave his house wide open, I don’t want to be the one to try and tell him why.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” Clayton shouted. “Jerry says, ‘Shit,’ and you say, ‘How much and what color.’” He walked toward the cellar door. “Just a little turn-bolt inside. Couple good kicks, we’re inside easy.”
“Hey, shut the hell up a minute. Alla you.”
Everyone turned to Johnny Farnsworth.
“Listen, we got to work together, else we’re gonna screw this thing up past fixin’. We ain’t against the wall yet. Maybe Barton run into some trouble out there, or maybe he’s havin’ too good of a time and lost track of the hour. I say let’s get in somebody’s car and go on out by Curd’s. If Jerry’s there, we can straighten him out, and if he ain’t, well, then we can come back here and do what we gotta do. At least we can tell him we tried.”
A pause, then Clayton said, “Okay. I’m for that.” A momentary mumbled agreement, then the five men piled into Clayton’s black Oldsmobile, and took off down the county road toward Georgetown.
***
Curd left Irma and Susie at his sister-in-law’s house on the outskirts of Jefferson City, then drove into town, through the business district, and up to Williams’ Funeral Home. No one around, not at this time of night. Curd walked around the side of the building, and up a gravel driveway to the back door. He pushed the button next to the door. No answer. He rang again.
A minute later, the door opened. An elderly colored man with a shiny dome and a fringe of cotton above his ears, blinked sleepy eyes at Curd.
“Mr. Williams, I be Richard Curd, from Georgetown. I got me a problem.”
All of a sudden, Williams looked fully awake. “Problem, huh? With Mr. Charlie, I bet.”
“He come by my place with a gun, was bound to shame my daughter. Had all her clothes off when I sneaked ‘round behind him with a ax.”
“Son of a bitch,” Williams murmured. “There ain’t no end to them hellhounds, is there?”
“I reckon not.”
Williams sighed. “Okay, then. Where you got him?”
“Truck out front.”
“Drive up to here, so we can bring him in easy. I can manage the feet-end.”
Curd started to walk away, then turned. “One other thing. That be his truck I got him in.”
“Sweet Jesus.” Williams shook his head. “You don’t make things easy, do you?”
“Sorry, Mr. Williams. But some things just ain’t easy, no matter how you cuts ’em.”
“How I knows that. Okay, when we done gettin’ him in here, I’ll back out the hearse into the driveway, and you put the truck inside. We’ll get off the license plates, then first thing in the morning, I’ll call Little Harry, and he’ll take it away. Time he be done with it, no one gonna be able to tell.”
“How much that gonna cost me?”
Williams shook his head. “Harry’ll sell the truck, a piece in St. Lou, a piece in Kay Cee. Everybody’ll come out okay. ‘cept maybe your friend out there. An’ I guess he won’t care none.”
***
In the crematory, Curd and Williams unrolled the blanket from around Barton’s body. “Leave it underneath him,” Williams said. “That way, we can just lift him inside, blanket and all. Won’t be nothin’ left but a li’l ashes.” The old man looked into what remained of the corpse’s face. “You did some number on him,” the mortician said. “Thought you tol’ me you come up from behind.”
“That I did do,” said Curd. “But he heard me, and started to come around.”
“Well, fine and dandy. Good he got to see what was comin’ his way.” Williams turned to address the body. “Guess it’s time to say a last prayer for you, Mr. Charlie. I’m prayin’ that every white devil ends up in the fire, both on this earth and below. Like you gonna do now.”
Curd saw a young white boy, a bloody ax at his feet, shaking like he had the St. Vitus Dance. “Ain’t all white folks bad,” he said softly.
“No, I guess not,” said Williams. “Problem is, you go tryin’ to sort ’em out, you like to end up dead yourself.” He swung the crematory door open. “Let’s get this done.”
***
The sound of a car door slamming sent Alan up off the couch and onto his feet. Voices outside, coming closer. The boy took a step toward the front door, then reversed course and ran back, fast as he dared in the darkness, through the kitchen, and out onto the little porch. He left the door part-way open, crouched low, listened.
At first, just voices, but then someone shouted, “Jerry. Hey, Jerry. You here?”
The boy heard bangs and thuds, saw shafts of light darting this way and that. Flashlights. Were they moving furniture, looking under chairs?
“This…shithouse,” someone said. “Way these people live. Don’t want…touch anything.”
“Too bad…didn’t…sawdust,” a tenor whine, hard to follow. “Do…like…school.”
Alan rubbed his ears, tried to listen harder, but all he could make out was the shifting and banging of furniture, and occasionally the sound of glass or china breaking. Then, a familiar voice said, “Jerry musta come and gone, else his truck…out front.”
Klein’s voice. Alan almost shouted it.
Another man said, “I’ll check…back.”
Alan glanced left, then right. He’d never make it to the woodshed or the privy. And if he tried to run off into the woods, they’d hear him crashing through underbrush. But the house was up on cinder blocks, and the crawl space looked high enough for him to squeeze into. He dove off the porch, got his head under cover, swung his legs around and inside. Something furry brushed his cheek, then skittered away. A possum? Rat? The boy covered his mouth with a hand.
A flashlight beam scanned the yard. The back door slammed. Alan tried to will away both the men in the house and the wildlife sharin
g his hideout. Finally, he heard a car engine turn over, but he lay still. No idea how many cars they came in.
Once the sound of the motor faded, Alan moved an arm. It was stiff to the point of being painful. He stretched, then began to crawl toward the edge of the house. His hand touched something cold and slimy; he shrieked disgust, then scuttled the rest of the way out, and without looking, wiped his hand on the seat of his trousers. He tiptoed to the back door, edged it open, listened. Silence. He went inside.
The bastards had done some job. The kitchen table lay on its side, one leg broken. Four chairs were strewn among shards of glass and pottery. The living room was worse. Overturned furniture created an obstacle course. The piano bench, resting against a wall, sent Alan sprawling into a mess of shredded paper, every piece of music Scott Joplin ever wrote.
Moonlight through the window reflected off something white near the boy’s hand. He picked it up, turned it over. A photograph, the one picture in the house, two generations of Sassafras Sams and their families. It had been pulled from the wall, ripped out of its wooden frame, torn, and tossed onto the floor.
‘Way these goddamn people live.’
Alan sank onto the sofa, wept quietly. This can of worms, every bit of it, was on his account. A week ago, he’d been a high school student in New Jersey, playing ragtime over his lunch hour, and now look at him. Out in the middle of nowhere, hiding in a Negro family’s shack, hands covered with filth, slime, and blood. Half of Sedalia hot on his tail, and five thousand dollars worth of journal under Eileen Klein’s mattress. He wiped a sleeve across his eyes. Maybe he ought to follow Samson’s map into Lincolnville, but instead of going to Mr. Ireland’s house, go to the railway station and catch the first train to St. Louis, then on to New York.
And leave the journal where he’d hidden it? After he’d caused all this trouble for the Curds, after he’d spent the five thousand dollars Miriam had stolen for him, after he’d killed a man, did he really think he could just forget about the journal and go back home. Pretend nothing ever happened? The boy shook his head. He had to see it through. It might not come out well, but that couldn’t be as bad as spending the rest of his life wondering what if. He pushed himself up off the floor, stretched, took the pencil-drawn map from his pocket, then started walking, out the door, onto the dirt road.
***
A few minutes past three, Johnny Farnsworth walked through the back door of the little frame house on Moniteau Avenue. Klein took his cigar from the corner of his mouth, flicked ash on the floor. “Y’ done already?”
Farnsworth laughed. “Piece of cake. When that stuff goes off, it’ll take out every bit of support under the auditorium, and down she’ll go. Good bet the whole stinkin’ place’ll come down right on top of it.”
Clay Clayton pointed out the window. “Damn, it’s dark out there, Johnny. I never even saw you comin’ back.”
“Dark as a nigger’s asshole,” Farnsworth said.
All the men laughed.
“But that’s just fine,” Farnsworth added. “It’s gonna look like the biggest Fourth of July fireworks anyone ever saw. Nice of Lincolnville to put up a grandstand for us. Right straight across open land from the school, empty lots on both sides.”
“Huh.” Rafe Anderson didn’t sound amused. “What all them empty lots and vacant houses means is that the niggers’re movin’ into town. Livin’ on the same streets as you and me.”
“Maybe this’ll make ’em think twice. Might even get ’em movin’ back with their own kind.” Luther Cartwright sounded like a schoolmarm, warning what was going to happen to the bad boys who’d been throwing spitballs. “But I think we got a problem. We’ve been figuring to go out to Jerry’s after the school blows, but it looks like Jerry bailed out on us.”
“Something’s wrong,” said Klein. “Jerry wouldn’t just go off like that.”
“Oh, sure.” Anderson sounded even more aggrieved than he had after Farnsworth’s comment. “If I saw Jerry Barton pissing on a hydrant, you’d tell me I was wrong, it musta been a dog. Maybe you don’t remember we took a blood oath, but I do, and if Jerry ever shows his face to me again, I’ll spit right in it. And if you don’t spit with me, I’ll give you a dose, too.”
“Rafe, we can’t be worryin’ about Jerry right now,” said Klein. “Luther’s right, we got a problem. But I think I know what we can do. If Jerry don’t show up tomorrow and have a good reason for tonight, we’ll go over to my place instead of his. I’ll set up a card table in the cellar, put some half-smoked cigars and drinks around, and leave the outside cellar door unlatched. Then, after the school blows, we’ll go on down there, real quiet, and far as anyone’s concerned, we been there all evening, minding our business.”
Cartwright raised a hand. “We were gonna go over to Jerry’s ‘cause he’s the only one of us doesn’t have a wife and kids. What about Rowena? And your daughter?”
Klein made a thick disparaging sound in his throat. “I’ll tell Rowena to stay upstairs from suppertime on. What I tell her to do, she does.”
“And Eileen?”
“Christ, Luther. She’s a sixteen-year-old girl. She ain’t gonna notice a thing, and even if she did, who the hell’s gonna listen to her?”
***
Alan couldn’t have said how far he’d walked, but every step now was an effort. He tripped over roots; low-hanging branches stung and scratched his face. Mr. Barton’s head seemed to float in the air before him, eyes bulging, mouth agape, wildly trying to escape from the ax blade a split-second from splintering his skull. Alan knew what he’d done was justified, he’d had no choice, but still, he’d killed a man. He was a murderer. His father, always so goddamn certain about what was right and what was wrong—what would The Professor say right now? A wave of contempt burned the boy’s cheeks and squeezed his throat, but then he was surprised by the realization that he had to feel sorry for a man who’d condemned himself to plod through life like a blindered horse, struggling at every step to keep the least bit of color from invading his tight little black-and-white world.
***
He came into a clearing at the Georgetown Road, trudged a short distance south, then followed Curd’s map along a footpath to Clay Street. Two short blocks along Clay took him to the corner of Osage, just across from Tom Ireland’s cottage. The boy checked his watch, nearly four o’clock. He quickened his step, trotted up the walk to the door, knocked.
No answer. He knocked harder, still no response.
He turned the knob and pushed the door open. “Mr. Ireland,” he called. “Mr. Ireland. It’s Alan Chandler. I need…”
His voice trailed off as Ireland shuffled into the room, a coal-oil lamp in his hand. Under other conditions, Alan would have laughed. In his long, white nightshirt and white cap, the old man looked exactly like an illustration of Mr. Barkis that Alan had once seen in a copy of David Copperfield. Ireland walked up to the boy, cocked his head, scrutinized him.
“Mr. Ireland, I need your help,” Alan said, as evenly as he could manage.
“From the looks of you, I’d say you need somebody’s help.” Ireland waved the boy into the kitchen. “Come on, sit down. I’ll make up some coffee, and you can tell me about it.”
***
Ireland listened without saying a word. When Alan finished, the old man drummed fingernails on the table, and sighed. “Got ourselves a real mess, don’t we? But there’s nothing we can do right now. I’ll draw you some water, you can clean up, then get yourself some sleep.”
“What are we going to do, though? We can’t go to the police.”
“I know what we can’t do, boy. What I don’t know yet is what we can do. I hope by the time you get up, I’ll have some idea of that.”
Chapter Nineteen
Tuesday, April 17
Morning
The sun was just coming up when Ireland padded past Alan, sound asleep on the living-room couch. The old man paused long enough to drop a note on the boy
’s shoes: HAD TO GO OUT, BACK SOON. DON’T YOU DARE SET A FOOT OUT OF THIS HOUSE.
Once outside, Ireland walked the few blocks to Lamine, strolled up to Alonzo Green’s house, eased the door open, slipped inside. The sound of wood being sawed came from Slim, on Green’s couch, a mountain of flesh under a light blanket. Ireland walked past the sleeper, into the back bedroom, and immediately found himself on the business end of a pistol. “Lonzo, put that damn gun away,” Ireland whispered, and closed the bedroom door. “Got to talk to you.”
Green lowered the pistol, set it back onto the little nightstand next to the bed.
Ireland walked up to the bedside. “You’re a hell of a light sleeper.”
“In my business, I better be. Damn, Tom, why you come sneakin’ in like that?”
Ireland pointed toward the living room. “I wanted a private audience.”
Green’s eyes opened wide. “Something happening?”
Ireland nodded. “The boy’s had himself quite a little time with Klein and Barton. He managed to get away, but he doesn’t have the journal now. Says he hid it in Klein’s house. Once I’m sure Klein’s off to work, the boy and I will go get it back, but I don’t want to take any chance that our friend out there might see him and upset our apple cart. Here’s what I need you to do. Tell Slim you’re going to have a talk with Barton about the journal, and you want him along in case things get nasty. Be careful no one sees you going up to the house, and if the door’s locked, break it in. Then go through the place, room by room. Take all morning. By then, the boy and I should have had enough time to get the journal back.”
Green looked toward the living room. The sound of Slim’s snoring went on without pause. “But what if Barton’s there? Or if he comes back and catches us going through the house?”
“He won’t be there, Lonzo.”
“But what if he—”
“He won’t be there.”
Green nodded slowly. “Okay, Tom. You say I ain’t gotta worry, I won’t.”