by Richard Peck
“Lucille,” I said quieter, “I’ll gladly plead guilty to whatever charges, but right now I’m a little tired and—”
“Guilty is the word!” said Lucille, making for my bed. “How dare you lurk up in that barnloft, spying, and in that ridiculous costume too! Tom Hackett bolted like a startled hare just when—I will kill you, Alexander, and that is a promise. You have ruined my last chance with Tom, and now you have a desperate woman to deal with.”
My thoughts tried to keep apace with Lucille’s mouth. But they were not equal to the task. They must have fallen somewhat behind because she presently had me by my nightshirt and was hissing dangerously in my ear, “Deny it if you dare and add lies to your loathsomeness!”
“Deny what, Lucille?”
“That you were in the barn. Look at your nightshirt—and your feet. They’re filthy. You were in that loft tonight, weren’t you?”
“I can’t deny that, Lucille, but—”
“Ha!” said Lucille and gave me a shake.
“—but I was not up there when—anybody else was.”
“A bald-faced lie!” she howled, forgetting to hiss. “You went up there to meet that red-necked little arachnid creature from across the tracks. That Blossom! And here’s the proof!” Lucille whipped out of her wrapper pocket the paper rose and the note I’d left, the one that said,
Here’s a blossom for you, Blossom,
you spidery-legged little spook.
“Oh I saw you under the porch at my party. You’re sweet on her, which is repulsive in itself. But up in the barn at night!”
Since Lucille and Tom had crept up the loft themselves, by her own admission, I did not think she had any business to be passing judgment on the doings of others. I told her this, which was a mistake. She fulminated something fierce, which gave me the time to remember one of her opening remarks.
“Hold on a minute, Lucille, before you work me over,” I said, though my head was snapping back and forth from her shaking. “What is this about a ridiculous costume?”
“You have the nerve to ask, who devised the whole hellish scheme! You know perfectly well what I’m talking about. Rising up in the comer just as Tom and I—rising up in the corner in that nasty old green dress you must have dredged up out of a trunk—holding a candle under your chin to distort your features and giving us both such a turn—and sending us down the steps—I might well have fallen and broken my—and Tom making off into the night like a thing pursued—oh, Alexander, is there no limit to your spiteful perfidy?”
This disjointed account was clarifying somewhat. Evidently Tom and Lucille had been visited by the ghost of Inez Dumaine. Inez, I thought, Inez, you have been working overtime this night.
A great dismalness came over me. How could I explain to Lucille that she and Tom had been disturbed by a specter instead of me? Lucille lacks the imagination to follow that line of reasoning.
After a night of terror, I was pretty well resigned to dying at the hands of my own sister. But a voice from the door called out, “Lucille! Unhand him!”
She wheeled around, and I retreated to the far side of my bed. Mother and Dad stood in the doorway, looking like they hadn’t just arrived. “Go to your room, Lucille!” Mother said. “Snuggling in the barnloft! Brawling in the house! Your party disfigured by that drunken oaf, Tom Hackett, who would ruin you and cast you to one side without a momentary qualm! That—laxative playboy! That you would so much as contemplate seeing him again after that party, much less allowing him to lure you into the barnloft! All your father and I, especially I, have done and all our well-meaning efforts came to this!”
Lucille looked in wonderment at Mother for an instant. Then she let out a screech and pounded from the room.
“You have saved your sister from a fate worse than death, Alexander, though your manner of doing so was rather showy. Nevertheless, one day she will thank you for it. But do not let those dirty feet of yours come in contact with the sheets. And go to sleep at once. It’s past your bedtime!”
Mother turned on Dad then, like he might have contradicted her on some point. But he was clearly buffaloed by all the foregoing. Then in the distance came the sound of an ambulance bell. It rang from the direction of the Woodlawn Avenue extension. Out to pick up all that remains of Amory Timmons, I thought privately.
Mother harked at the far-off ringing, which has a calamitous sound, particularly at night. “And what tragedy does that portend?” she asked, very dramatic.
At that, the night breeze played up into a wind, lashing the elm branches around. A crackling sound came from the side yard, followed by the splintering of wood and a great crash. Dad unlatched the window screen and stuck his head out. Then he ducked back in and told us that Lucille’s party pavilion had blown down.
Mother drew her wrapper around her neck and said darkly, “This night is full of omens.”
I was inclined to agree.
As a rule, Sunday stands pretty still in Bluff City. Of course, that particular Sunday was an exception. I woke up looking at my dirty feet, a pair of souvenirs of a busy night. There was a nettle rash on my legs too, from all those weeds I’d come through climbing away from Snake Creek. It was just a question of time before some busybody would link me up with the salvation of the streetcar passengers. And when this revelation came, it would open up a whole new field of inquiry.
The smell of Gladys’s coffee wafted up from the dining room. There was no way of avoiding church because there never is. The Baptists were already setting to in their chapel over on Eldorado Street, and their old pump organ was wheezing a prelude. They are hardshell, but harmonious, and they raised up their voices in song: “Draw me nearer, O my savior, day by day.” We have given up being Baptists in favor of being Episcopalians, which is a step up socially but a step down when it comes to hymn-singing.
Not wishing to be conspicuous until it was inevitable, I got into my Sunday clothes and started down to the dining room unbidden. Lucille was at her place, puff-faced, with the Pantagraph folded open to Lowell Seaforth’s article beside her plate of waffles.
“There now,” Mother was saying, “that nice young man from the paper did your party proud and omitted unseemly details, for which we owe him many thanks. It is up to you, my girl, to hold your head high and let the community know you are of a superior type who has seen the light regarding such people as the Hacketts.”
Dad was doggoned if he knew how all of a sudden—overnight so to speak—every one of the Hacketts had turned out to be such lowlifes. But he was given a couple of stricken looks and subsided.
I slid the newspaper out from under Lucille’s elbow and read Lowell’s article, thinking it was handsome of him to mention my name as one of the party-givers. Then I leafed to the front page for word of the trestle disaster, which was surely the biggest thing that had happened to Bluff City in living memory. But the news hadn’t broken on that yet.
Gladys came in with my plate of waffles and remarked that the lawn looked like the Battle of Bull Run had been waged across it. At length, Mother said to Lucille, “Get your hat and gloves. You’re going to church as usual.” The fight was pretty much out of Lucille. She kept darting me looks that spoke strongly of possible gratitude and certain revenge. I could see she was still unsettled in her mind. For that matter, so was I.
We drove the Mercer to church, and Mother nodded to everyone on foot along the way. Lucille kept her veil down until the last moment before she had to take communion.
“Let us rejoice and be exceeding glad,” said Father Ludlow in place of his prepared invocation, “that our brothers and sisters in this community were snatched from untimely and awful death.”
There was a mumbling in the congregation by those who knew about the bridge business telling their neighbors. “And let us pray for our benighted brother, Amory Timmons, whose madness hath delivered him from our realm to the seat of a merciful judgment.”
Dad stirred at that, but Jake McCulloch, the undertaker, leaned up from
the pew behind and whispered into his ear. Then Dad slipped forward on the kneeler and offered a silent prayer for Amory’s soul. I did the same, feeling bad that I hadn’t thought of it before.
The thought of Inez Dumaine interrupted my prayers for Amory. I didn’t know what to make of Inez, but I knew then as I know now that she is of the next world, not this, so I added a word or two in her behalf.
While I was doing all this praying, Father Ludlow was saying in the background, “... and a little child shall lead them.” Though I am not exactly little and no longer a child, I took this as a personal reference. I could begin to feel the hot breath of publicity on the back of my neck. And I knew full well that I’d have some explaining to do of matters very difficult to explain.
Chapter Thirteen
I spent that long Sunday afternoon down among the snowball bushes, somewhat bemused. Up in the house Mother and Lucille were going at it hammer and tongs. Lucille was complaining in loud terms about how Mother had been throwing her at Tom’s head since she was in short skirts. And Mother was responding that she had always thought Tom was a ne’er-do-well, a feckless masher, and a poor prospect.
Lucille said that, as an opinion, this was a new one to her. And Mother answered that Lucille had always been susceptible and had no more sense of decorum and propriety than a barnyard fowl. She also quoted Uncle Miles’s history of the Hackett family without giving him any credit. They went over this ground a number of times, and the snowball bushes muffled very little of the noise.
Along toward midafternoon, I spotted Lowell Seaforth ambling up the lane with his straw hat on the back of his head. He looked weary, and I attributed that to his spending a sleepless night on the Snake Creek story. I parted the snowballs as he drew near the house.
“Well, Alexander,” he said in some surprise.
If he’d come for a word with me, I said, he might care to join me in the bushes where there was some prospect of privacy. He replied that there are few places he won’t go for good journalistic material.
Lowell made himself comfortable against the porch foundation and came right to the point. He said that certain of the streetcar survivors had mentioned my name. “I take it that word of this hasn’t reached your family since I’m conducting this interview under the porch.”
That was about the size of it, I told him. And as he is a first-rate newspaperman, it didn’t take him long to learn from me that I was the same Alexander Armsworth who flagged the trolley with my nightshirt. When it came to modest heroes, Lowell said, looking up at the leaves, I took the cake. “Now, then, Alexander, just how did you know to give the alarm?”
When in doubt, tell the truth, as the saying goes. Though I never thought for a minute a fellow as worldly as Lowell Seaforth would credit a ghost in the barn and a message from the Great Beyond.
When he heard me out, he said, “Sure it wasn’t some little neighborhood girl dressed up and playing the fool? Seems to me just yesterday right where we sit I saw a girl under these snowball bushes.”
I told him that Inez Dumaine was definitely not Blossom in disguise, though I gave Blossom credit for informing me that I was receptive to the Unseen. “This is a tall tale, Alexander,” Lowell said. “Let’s us have a look at the barn.”
We went around the house and under the shadow of the Dutch elm, fetching up beside the hitching post. Lowell examined everything pretty close, though I was in some question about how seriously he took my story.
“Captain Campbell built this place, didn’t he?” I nodded, noticing that Lowell’s brows were knitting. “Then why do you reckon he had these initials carved on the hitching post instead of his own?” I looked down at them as I had done many a time without thinking. I looked down at I.D.
“Inez Dumaine,” Lowell said and looked at me with new eyes. I stared at the initials, and my throat went dry.
Lowell had a look up in the loft, but I hung around outside. He seemed to want to do his own investigating. He was up there quite a spell, and once when I started to lean an elbow on the hitching post, I thought better of it. Finally, he came back.
“Somebody’s been up there pretty recently,” he said. “There’s a small wet footprint, though why there should only be one I cannot figure.” I told him it was a regular feature of the place, and had he happened to see a small wet dog?
“No,” said Lowell, “but nothing would have surprised me. I am a skeptic regarding the supernatural, but there is nothing natural about that loft. Sure you didn’t think up a name to go with those initials on that hitching post, Alexander?” he said, possibly to catch me off guard.
“I’m sure,” I told him, and he believed me.
“I will tell you straight, Alexander,” he said. “Amory Timmons and the trestle is a big story, bigger than I ever bargained for so early in my career. But when we add to it your ghostly take, I wonder if it won’t stretch the credulity of the readers.”
I was not altogether sure what credulity meant, but I got the drift. “Well, if it is all the same to you, Lowell, why don’t you keep me out of your story altogether?”
“I’m afraid that wouldn’t do much good,” he replied, “considering that rumors circulate faster than newspapers.”
As proof of that, Mother came out on the back porch calling me. When she spotted Lowell, her eyes lighted up, but she was distracted. We drew near, and she looked from one of us to the other. “Oh, Mr.—”
“Seaforth,” I said.
“Yes,” said Mother. “We are deeply in your debt regarding the party yesterday, and I—have you met our daughter, Lucille?—won’t you step inside and take some refresh—” Mother made several half turns and fanned the screen door. “Alexander, there are people out front mentioning your name. Your father is dealing with them, but he is hardly equal to it, and I think—oh, the two of you had better step inside.” But she blocked the door for some time, trying to get her priorities in order.
We finally eased her through to the hall. From the other end of the house came a buzzing of voices. The only one I could make out was Dad’s. He was saying, “As far as I know, Alexander was not off the place all last evening.”
“You had just as well face your public,” Lowell said to me, casting Mother into deeper confusion.
Then from the group of people in the front hall, the motorman stepped out, pointed his finger at me, and said, “That there is the boy!”
But he was pushed to one side by a girl with a number of flowers on her hat. I didn’t recognize her, but she made straight for me and threw her arms around my neck.
“Now see here,” Mother said.
But the girl burst out, “Here he is! Here is the boy who was our salvation! Here is our hero! We would all have been dead in the crick but for this here boy!”
Several other half-familiar people surged forward, pinning Mother to the wall. The men were not so outgoing as the girls, but all were very loud with their gratitude. I could hardly draw breath from the number of wet kisses and claps on the back I was receiving.
I looked up once to see Lucille gazing down from the stairway in blank amazement. Then she shifted her gaze to Lowell who was behind me and a new look came into her eyes.
Above the din, Mother’s voice howled out, “What are these people doing in my house?”
Chapter Fourteen
UNSEEN HAND GUIDES YOUTHFUL HERO
by Lowell Seaforth of the PANTAGRAPH staff See related story: AWFUL CONFLAGRATION CLAIMS CRAZED PERPETRATOR
Alexander Armsworth, Horace Mann schoolboy of Pine Street, stepped out of the Saturday night darkness to alert Motorman G. V. Rafferty of impending trouble on the Snake Creek trestle. The half-filled trolley making its late run was thus halted short of the bridge, dangerously weakened by axe and flame. (See Amory Timmons obituary on last page.)
The modest rescuer of nearly a score of lives vanished from the hellish creekside but not before he was identified. A deputation of survivors led by Motorman Rafferty called at the Armsworth home yesterd
ay only to find that young Alexander’s family, the prominent Joe Armsworths and their debutante daughter, were unaware of their young hero’s timely exploit.
Closely questioned, the plucky lad revealed that the ghost of a young girl who in a former incarnation had evidently been lost in a similar disaster, appeared to him with a warning. Interpreting this spectral message delivered in the Armsworth barnloft, the boy acted with speed, flagging the trolley in his nightshirt. (See related story: Local Clergy Disturbed by News of Spiritualism.)
Crowds of the curious have already begun their pilgrimage to the Ghost Barn. Mrs. Joe Armsworth begs to inform the public that she is not at home to anyone and that trespassers will be prosecuted. The St. Louis papers are interested.
Crowds of the curious milled around down at the end of the lane from early Monday on. I was at home to observe them in the distance since Mother said I was to skip school until this blew over. Dad mentioned that as anything unusual is in short supply, this was not likely to blow over anytime soon. Lucille was in an agitated state, eying me with unspoken suspicions. She was still not sure whether she and Tom had been spoofed or spooked. And either way, she didn’t like the attention I was getting.
Neither did I. Mother drew the blinds early Monday and gave me a good grilling. She was unable to swallow this ghost business, and unwilling. I wasn’t allowed farther than the front porch and then only as Dad was making an early start to work.
“Well, Alexander,” Dad said, “I had hoped that once Lucille’s party was out of the way, we could settle back to some normal living. Now my hopes are dashed.” He rummaged around for his cigar clipper and continued, “But this new development is your story, and you are stuck with it.”
“Dad,” I said, “to the best of my knowledge it is all true.”
“Alexander,” he said, “if I didn’t think that, you would already be skinned and hung up to dry. The thing about it is, you were not cut out for a quiet life because you are honest to a fault. As your mother is not within hearing, I’ll say to you that you are a throwback to Uncle Miles, God help you.” Then he nipped off his cigar end and started down the porch steps into his day.