by Jon Hassler
“All right, listen, I’ll tell you what’s gone wrong in my life, because it’s been on my mind ever since I was ten and if I don’t tell somebody pretty soon I’ll go crazy. My father was sent to prison for murder, did you know that?”
Beverly’s voice was a desperate screech. Nadine lowered her eyes, wishing she had not probed.
“And did you know it was a murder he was innocent of? He had a trial in Berrington and he was convicted and sent to Stillwater, but he wasn’t kept in Stillwater very long. He was taken out of prison and put in a hospital, and that’s where he died about three years ago.” She was no longer speaking to Nadine but to the whole class. Her copper blush was vanishing, leaving her face the color of ash.
“He was convicted of killing a salesman who sold kitchenware to brides. It happened on our front porch when I was ten, and I know exactly what happened because I was standing on the porch when it happened and so was my sister, who was seventeen at the time and getting ready to marry Harlan Prentiss, who wasn’t a very good marriage prospect—even I knew that—but I admired my sister for finding a way to get off the miserable farm we lived on. The miserable farm I still live on. It was the middle of the summer and this salesman showed up at the farm not long after my sister’s engagement notice appeared in the Staggerford Weekly. He asked for my sister and I went in the house and got her, and he gave her a card with his name on it and said he was selling cutlery and kettles. ‘What will you do for pans when you are married?’ he asked my sister. ‘What will your new husband think if you have no pans or knives in the kitchen when you return from your honeymoon? Will you have the courage to say, “Tonight I will cook the first meal of our married lives, but first be a dear and go to the hardware store and buy some pans and knives. Buy a frying pan, a double boiler, and two or three other pans of various sizes”? Will you have the courage to say that? “And get a bread knife while you’re at it, a carving knife and a paring knife.” Will you have the courage to say that? What will your new husband think if you don’t bring knives and pans to your marriage?’
“I was on the porch and my mother and father were standing in the front room listening through the screen door, and my mother was getting very impatient. ‘Get out of here,’ she said through the screen, but the salesman ignored her. ‘Who do you think brings pans and knives to a marriage if it isn’t the bride?’ he asked my sister. ‘The husband is not the one to plan what will be in the kitchen. The bride, by tradition, takes care of those things, and I have an idea that you are not aware of that tradition. Let me show you the samples I’ve got here in my bag.’
“ ‘Get out of here and this is my last warning,’ my mother said from the front room. I went and looked through the screen door to tell her to shut up because I wanted to see the samples he brought in his suitcase, and when I looked through the screen into the front room I saw she had the rat gun in her hand. Our rat gun is a single-shot twenty-two that we shoot rats with around the chicken coop. ‘Get out of my way,’ my mother shouted at me. I looked back at the salesman to see if he knew she had a gun, but he wasn’t looking through the screen. He was stooping down getting a sample pan out of his suitcase. His last words were, ‘This frying pan is a sample of what I can give you.’ He no more than said those words and straightened up to hand my sister the pan when my mother took aim through the screen and shot him with the rat gun. My sister screamed and jumped off the porch and ran off into the woods. I went into the front room. It didn’t occur to me to be afraid of my mother. I was afraid of the salesman, who was lying on the steps with his feet on the porch and his head on the ground. I didn’t believe he was dead because none of us really believe our mothers are capable of killing anybody, but he scared me all the same and I wanted to get away from him and inside the house and be safe. But he was dead all right. My mother handed the rat gun to my dad and she went to the phone and called the sheriff in Berrington. We had a phone in those days. When the sheriff came she said my dad had done the shooting. I never told this to anybody before.”
Beverly hung her head and put her hand in her hair and scratched her scalp. The class drew a deep breath. Miles rose from his chair at the back of the room and said, “Do you realize what you’re saying, Beverly?” She ignored him and continued.
“The sheriff took my dad away. He didn’t argue. He was never one to argue. My sister ran away with Harlan Prentiss that night. Neither my mother nor I went to the trial in Berrington because my mother said what was done was done and once a man was accused of murder there was nothing anybody could do to get him free. I don’t suppose I had any concept of there being a trial. I was ten. I imagined they had taken him away to jail and that was that. Another thing my mother said was that if he was put in jail he would have the treatment he needed for his mental problem. To this day I don’t know what his mental problem was, but I don’t think it was craziness. I think he was simply retarded. He was next to useless around the farm but he was always agreeable, and I think my mother knew she could accuse him of the murder and he wouldn’t know what was going on. She knew she could get away with it because he trusted her. I’m sure he never raised any objection at the trial and neither did anybody else. We were the only ones who knew the truth and we weren’t there.
“I suppose, too, that once they got him in prison they realized what they had on their hands—a retarded man who wasn’t responsible for his actions. And so they transferred him to a mental hospital and that’s where he lived for five more years.
“I was fifteen when he died. They brought his body up to the Sandhill Reservation for the funeral. He was part Chippewa and he had lived on the reservation before he was married. The funeral was in the Episcopal Church out there. The church was never used except for emergencies like funerals. The windows were all boarded up and the pews and everything were covered with dust. They didn’t even have a regular preacher. They had Alexander Bigmeadow. When the service was over they put the coffin in the back of a pickup and drove it along the little road leading to the cemetery, which is quite a ways back in the woods. The pickup drove slow and everybody walked behind it in the two ruts of the road. Some of the graves out there are big mounds where they used to bury people in a sitting position, and some have little houses on top of them where the dead person’s spirit can live if it wants to. Some of the spirit’s favorite things are left in the houses so they’ll be handy, like shoes and tobacco. But the last few years they’ve been burying people flat, and that’s the way they buried my dad. There wasn’t any marker put on the grave and I’ve lost track of where he is. The first thing I did when I got my driver’s license was go out there to visit his grave, but the grave I thought was his had a birch tree growing out of it. A big birch tree, ten or twenty years old.”
The bell rang, but nobody moved.
“So that gives you some idea why the ending of Gone With the Wind didn’t strike me as melodramatic. If tomorrow isn’t a better day than yesterday, then I’d be better off to kill myself.”
Beverly went to her desk and sat down. A few students stood up to leave.
This was not Miles’s finest hour. He was confused. “Wait a minute,” he said, hurrying to the front of the room. The students sat down. “We’ve just heard something serious and we’d better decide what we’re going to do about it. Beverly, do you realize that in front of thirty people you have just accused your mother of murder?”
Her eyes shifted away from his. She nodded. She took a box of Marlboros out of her purse.
“What we’ve just heard is serious,” he said again, then stammered, then said, “I don’t think any of you should leave this room until you’ve pledged yourselves to secrecy.”
Nadine Oppegaard said, “Don’t be dumb, Mr. Pruitt. You can’t expect thirty people to keep a secret like this.”
Peter Gibbon said, “I’m going to be late for physics.”
Nadine added, “Why should it be a secret? The sooner the matter is settled the better off certain people are going to be, especially
Beverly.”
He knew she was right, of course. “Okay, we’ll leave it at this: If you can’t keep this business to yourselves, at least keep calm, and keep your parents calm. Don’t let your parents do anything rash about this. I’ll do what has to be done.”
When he dismissed the class, Beverly did not linger behind the others. Miles followed her through the crowded corridor and caught up with her near the front door. He put his hand on her arm. She pulled away.
“Now that you’ve told your secret, Beverly, I’m sure you feel better, but I must say you picked a hell of a place—”
“Please, Mr. Pruitt, I need a smoke.” She pushed open the door and stepped outside.
He followed her to the bottom step, where the Giant had lied to Bennie Bird. He said, “Now what we’ll have to do is call the police in on this. I’ll explain it to the police and they can take it from there. You’ll have to talk to them. Where will you be after school? Why don’t you go to Miss McGee’s and wait there?”
She avoided his eyes. She was trying to strike a match. Her hands were shaking.
He took her matches and lit her cigarette. “You hear me, Beverly? Go to Agatha’s after school.”
She nodded. “You’ll be late for sixth hour,” she said.
“So will you.”
“I’m not going to sixth hour. I need to think. And smoke.” She crossed the street to her truck.
“Go to Agatha’s and wait for me,” he called.
He went to Wayne Workman’s office, saw that it was empty, and sat down to use the phone. He called the Staggerford police office. Old John Kern was on duty. Miles told him about the Bone woman. Old John Kern said it was a shame. Miles told him to go out and arrest her. Old John Kern said she lived outside the city limits and therefore outside his jurisdiction.
“Whose jurisdiction is it?”
“The sheriffs.”
“Then I’ll call the sheriff.” He asked the operator to get him the sheriff in Berrington.
He let the phone ring a dozen times before he hung up and left the office.
When Miles was gone, Wayne came out of his closet.
Upstairs in study hall—in that murky chamber of dismal thoughts—it occurred to Miles that Beverly might have been lying. She might have made up the whole story in order to get rid of her mother once and for all. But no, she couldn’t have made it up. But yes, it was a possibility. It might explain why she became shifty-eyed and ran from him after class. She was ashamed of her lie. Yet before he called on her to give her report she had been gazing at him fondly with her steady blue eyes. That was not the look of someone calculating a lie. No, her story had to be spontaneous and true. It was the story she had been trying to tell him all week. It was what she was trying to say, or trying to keep from saying, yesterday as he was changing the tire on her pickup.
Or was it a lie? What did he really know about the Bone-woman, aside from what Beverly told him? He had seen her dark shape in the alleys of Staggerford, and he had heard her voice when she asked for bones. But only once had he got a good look at her, and that was last Saturday in the gulch when she brushed past him and went splashing along the cold creek and crashing through the undergrowth. That day she definitely looked distracted. But that did not prove her a killer.
From study hall Miles went to the home ec room and told Thanatopsis about the Binghams, mother and daughter.
Thanatopsis said that whether the story of the murder was true or not, both Beverly and her mother needed help. She put on her coat and drove Miles home in her yellow Mustang. Beverly was not there.
Miss McGee came in from St. Isidore’s and they told her about the Bonewoman.
Miss McGee said, “You’ve got to find that girl and get her back here.” She put on her apron and began making hot chocolate, shaving a bar of cocoa into a saucepan. “Why is everything so dreadful nowadays?” she asked of the clock above the stove. It was nearly four.
Miles and Thanatopsis went looking for Beverly. Thanatopsis drove. Miles went into the Hub, but she was not there. The cook said Beverly had not shown up for work. He bought a copy of the Staggerford Weekly and went out to the car. He told Thanatopsis to drive the streets, and as she did so he looked for the black pickup.
“She must have gone home,” he said after they searched every street.
“Shall we go out and see?”
“Let’s.”
It was five o’clock as Thanatopsis sped out of town. It had been a dark day, and night was falling early. The only light in the sky was a brown glow sinking in the southwest—barely enough light for Miles to scan the Weekly.
Across the front page was the headline STAGGERFORD UPRISING. In a photo the governor’s Giant stood with one hand on Bennie Bird’s shoulder and the other hand pointing to the front door of the school. The picture was taken by Albeit Fremling just as the Giant told the big lie about Jeff Norquist. “Confrontation Contained,” was the caption.
On page two there appeared the only action photo that Albert Fremling, sprawled on the sidelines, had salvaged from the game against Owl Brook. It showed his son Lee being pushed backward into Peter Gibbon as Peter tried to kick the winning point.
On page three, where the Uprising article was continued, there appeared a photo taken in Wayne Workman’s office. Between the Giant and Alexander Bigmeadow, who had their fat backs to the camera, Wayne was scowling with his mouth open and his hands stretched out in beggarly fashion. He was obviously saying something from his heart. The caption said, “Workman the Peacemaker.”
Next to the Bingham mailbox stood a soldier. He wore his pants tucked into his boots, a drill jacket, and a long-billed cap. As Thanatopsis slowed down, the soldier brought his rifle up across his chest and kept her from turning into the driveway.
“What’s happening?” said Miles, getting out of the car.
“This is off limits, move on.” The soldier stood in the headlights and looked very young.
“What’s happening? Tell me what’s happening.”
“It’s classified, move on.”
“I have to see somebody on this farm. Let me walk in.”
“Nobody goes in. Those are my orders. Move on.”
Miles got into the car. “Drive back as far as the cemetery,” he said.
Thanatopsis made a U-turn on the highway, peeling rubber. “Is he a soldier or a boy scout?” she said.
“Turn in here,” said Miles.
She drove up to the cemetery gate and stopped.
“I’m going back to the farm by way of the river path and see what’s going on. You better go home. Wayne will be wondering where you are.”
“I’ll wait,” she said.
Miles circled the cemetery and dropped down the bank to the river. The path along the river was not difficult to follow, for although the sky held nothing but darkness a lingering twilight glimmered in the shallow water. Boy and man he had walked the path, and he knew every turn and dip, every rock and root. Leaving the path and making his way along the creek in the gulch was the hard part. Here all was blackness and he made a great noise breaking through the brush.
But a greater noise was coming from the direction of the farm: the noise of shifting gears and slamming doors and shouts. He followed these sounds up from the creek. He stopped at the edge of the woods and saw, under the Bingham’s yard light, an armed camp. Parked on the slope of the farmyard were four army trucks and six jeeps. Soldiers with rifles strapped over their shoulders were swarming from shed to garage to bam, looking for a place to bed down. It was obvious from their joking and complaining that they were enjoying themselves. The house was dark. It was a smaller house than Miles had imagined it to be—a story and a half with a door and a single window under the roof of the porch and one window (with no glass) above it. A soldier sat on the porch with a rifle across his knees.
Another, on patrol, passed within a few feet of where Miles was standing. Miles held his breath, and when the soldier was gone he returned to the creek and to the
path and to the cemetery and to Thanatopsis waiting in the car.
“What did you find?” she asked.
“The National Guard.”
They returned to Staggerford and saw, at the edge of town, several police cars parked in front of the Big Chief Motel. Miles asked Thanatopsis to stop, and he went to the office and asked the manager if a giant had checked into the motel. He had. He was in Room 8.
Miles knocked on Room 8.
The Governor’s Giant opened the door. “You’re early,” he said.
“Early for what?”
“I’ve called a meeting of the Staggerford delegation for seven o’clock. That’s you and Workman and the Norquist kid. I want to brief you on tomorrow’s plans. I called your house and your landlady said she’d tell you.”
Miles said, “I’m not here about that. I’m here to find out why the National Guard is parked in the Bingham barnyard.”
The Giant caught his breath. “Who told you?”
“Nobody. I was just out there.”
“Come in.”
Miles stepped into Room 8, which because it contained the Giant seemed very small. But for all his size, the Giant was less imposing than yesterday, perhaps because he wasn’t wearing his hat, which yesterday had concealed his baldness, or perhaps because he had unstrapped his holster and laid it on the bed.
“This is confidential, Pruitt. That’s your name, isn’t it—Pruitt? No one’s supposed to know, so keep it to yourself. The Guard is out there in case there’s trouble tomorrow in Pike Park. The Bingham farm is perfect for bivouacking the Guard. They can’t be seen from the highway, yet at a signal from me the Guard can be out of the gulch and into the Park inside of two minutes. That’s logistics for you. On paper it works out to two minutes. If the Indians cause us any trouble they’ll be looking at sixty men armed to the teeth inside of two minutes.”
“How much trouble do you expect from three or four Indians?”