The Winchesters

by James Lincoln Collier

  Her head was twisted back in a strange way. There was foam around her muzzle, and her eyes were wide open. But there was no light in them, and I knew that she was dead. My heart started to thump. I turned and ran up across the lawn, around the house on the blue-stone driveway, and into the stable.

  The stable boy was sweeping up. “Where's Durham?” I shouted.

  He didn't let go of the broom, but gestured with his chin. “Out back. In the cutting garden.”

  I ran out of the stable and around back. Durham was in the garden, bent over the dahlias. “Durham,” I shouted, “Duchess is down by the pond. I think she's dead.”

  He jerked upright. “Dead?”

  “I think so.”

  “Where?”

  “I'll show you.” We ran back around the stable, down the driveway, and across the lawn to the pine grove. I pointed. “She's in there.” Durham ran on, and when he came up to the dog he dropped to his knees and knelt there, his hand on Duchess's muzzle.

  “Poisoned. Those lousy punks poisoned her.”

  “Who, Durham?”

  “Them.” He stood up and spat into the pine needles. “Them. The ones I chased out of here the other day. Sure as you're standing there, they did it.”

  “You don't think she just died, Durham?”

  “There wasn't nothing wrong with her yesterday. They come in here last night and did it. Those lousy punks. To kill a dog like that. They wouldn't take on no man. Just a poor dumb dog that didn't know any better than to eat a chunk of poisoned meat.” He knelt down and began to stroke the dog's fur. “Don't you worry none, old girl,” he said softly. “We'll get them for you.” He stayed there for a minute stroking her, almost as if he could hardly stand to say goodbye. Then he stood up. “Stay here and watch. Don't let nobody touch nothing.” He trotted off swiftly up the lawn toward the house.

  I stood there feeling scared and sorry. I didn't like looking at Duchess with her head twisted back and the dried foam on her muzzle, and I turned my back to her and looked out over the pond. Did Benny Briggs really poison Duchess? Was he the kind of guy who would do something like that? I wasn't sure about that. Benny was the kind of guy who would hit you if he was sore at you—he wouldn't think of something like poisoning a dog. It seemed to me more likely that it was some grown-ups. Maybe Benny's dad had done it, or some of his dad's friends. But maybe it had nothing to do with Benny. Maybe poor Duchess had just got hold of some rat poison somehow. I hoped it wasn't Benny. There was going to be all kinds of trouble if it was.

  About five minutes later Ernest came charging across the lawn. The minute he saw Duchess he began cursing Benny Briggs. “Ernest,” I said, “we don't know if Benny did it. It could have been an accident.”

  “Come on, Chris, who else would do it except Benny? We're going to get that guy, all right. Oh, he's going to be sorry he started all this.”

  The whole thing was beginning to bother me a lot. I was sorry for Duchess. It was terrible to see her lying there all twisted back, knowing that she must have been hurting something awful when she was dying. But even so, the Winchesters were going to take it out on Benny. They were going to make things mighty tough for him. I was beginning to get a little smarter about the Winchesters. I was beginning to understand that they could be very tough and hard when they wanted to. If they were willing to let a lot of people lose their jobs, what they did to one dumb kid who didn't understand how anything worked wouldn't bother them very much. “Ernest, give the guy a break. You can't prove that he did it.”

  “We'll prove it,” Ernest said. “Don't worry about that.”

  Uncle Foster came with Durham, and in a little while the vet drove up in his van. We all stood around while the vet squatted over Duchess. “Looks like poisoning,” he said finally. “But I won't know for sure until I do an autopsy.” He and Durham wrapped Duchess in a piece of canvas and carried her up the lawn to the van.

  Uncle Foster touched my arm. “Chris, come on back to the office with me. I want to talk to you.”

  I didn't want to go with him. He was going to put me in the middle of the whole thing. I hated the idea of that. I didn't like Benny Briggs very much now, but I didn't want to take sides against him, either. But there was nothing I could do, so I followed Uncle Foster up the lawn, into the house, and down to his office, with the antique desk and the pictures of those ships on the walls. I sat down in the easy chair, and Uncle Foster went behind his desk, put his feet up on his wastebasket, and looked out the window. The limo was parked there, and there was a bucket of water and a sponge beside it, but Durham had gone into town with the vet.

  Uncle Foster went on looking out the window. “Chris, what do you know about these people?”

  “Not too much, Uncle Foster. Benny isn't in my grade. I never knew him too well.”

  “What about the others?”

  “I don't know them at all. I think they might even be older than Benny. I mean, I see them around, but I don't know who they are.” That was almost true—I didn't know the name of one of them, and I wasn't sure about the name of the other.

  “But you played ball with the Briggs kid, right?”

  “That's when I knew him, when we were on the team together. I never hung out with him or anything like that.”

  “That's all you know?”

  “I guess so,” I said. “But it doesn't seem like Benny is the type of guy who would poison a dog.”

  He glanced around at me and then looked back out the window. “Chris, why are you protecting these people?”

  That stopped me. I didn't know how to answer it. Finally I said, “I just don't want to be put in the middle.”

  “Chris, they come onto our place to swim without asking, and when we tell them to leave, they poison our dog. We didn't threaten them, we didn't use any force against them, did we? You were there—Durham didn't turn the dog on them, did he?”

  “No. He just shouted at them to get out of there.”

  “They're the ones who caused the trouble. There's no middle to be in, Chris. They're wrong, and we're right.”

  I wondered if he understood “these people” any better than Ernest did. It didn't sound like he did, but I wasn't sure. “See, the thing is, Uncle Foster, I go to school with these guys. I'm going to be in high school next year, and Benny Briggs will be there, too. I can't help being in the middle.”

  He turned his head around and looked at me for a minute, thinking. “Yes, of course,” he said. “I keep forgetting that. In some ways you're a town boy, aren't you, Chris? I should have recognized that before.”

  “Lots of those guys are my friends.” I decided not to say anything about Marie. I didn't know why, but I didn't want to mention her to him.

  “Yes, of course they would be.” He nodded to himself a couple of times, thinking. “It's our fault you're in the middle, when you get down to it. Perhaps we should have done things another way.”

  I knew what he meant by that—he meant that they should have sent me to a private school, like Ernest. But there wasn't anything I could say, and anyway, the way things were going, I wasn't sure I wanted to be sent to a private school.

  Uncle Foster nodded to himself again. “I guess we've been taking you a little too much for granted, Chris. You know, six years ago Skipper turned the mills over to me, and it's kept me pretty busy. I keep forgetting that you haven't got a father. I should remind myself of that a little more. I think if Skipper had been around a little more, he'd have seen that more was done for you. Your grandfather's very pleased with the way you've been growing up, Chris. I hope you realize that. So am I, for that matter.”

  I hadn't realized it, and it surprised me a lot. In fact, I hadn't realized that Skipper ever gave me a thought one way or another. But now I could see that he had, and more than that, he'd talked about me with Uncle Foster. It surprised me, all right, but it made me feel good, too. I didn't know what to say. “Well, thanks, Uncle Foster.”

  He nodded to himself once more. Then he said, �
��Now having said all that, Chris, you've got to see our viewpoint, too.” He took his feet off the wastebasket and turned around to face me. “These people have got to be reminded that there are laws in this country about private property. I can't walk into their houses and help myself to their refrigerators, and they can't come up here whenever they like and use my pond.”

  He wagged his finger at me. “We're going to find out who poisoned that dog, and then we'll decide what to do. In this town things go the way we want them to go.” He didn't say this in a loud voice, or thump on the desk with his fist or anything. He said it calmly, like he was talking about the weather, but I knew he meant every word of it.

  “Maybe Benny Briggs didn't do it,” I said. “I don't think he's the type of guy would poison a dog.”

  Uncle Foster swiveled away to face out the window again. He put his feet on the wastebasket and touched the tips of his fingers together in front of his chin. “Chris, power is a very interesting thing, as you might find out one day. If you do, you'll quickly come to learn that it's like a muscle in the body—if you don't use it, it deteriorates. If you allow people to erode your power, pretty soon you won't have it anymore, and somebody else will. Then you'll be at their mercy, and that's not as much fun as the other way around. I'm sorry about Duchess, because I liked that dog, but she was more Durham's than mine.” He clicked the tips of his fingers together a couple of times. “But that's not the point. The point is that I can't let anyone injure us, without striking back. And that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to find out who did this, and I'm going to punish them for it.” He turned his head to look at me. “Can you understand that, Chris?”

  I didn't like it, but I understood it. “Yes, I see what you mean, Uncle Foster.”

  Suddenly he stood up. “Okay. I hope next time we have a conversation it'll be on a pleasanter subject.”

  I went out of there feeling pretty confused. I could see that there was something to all that stuff about not letting people erode your power. It was pretty much the same as not running away from a fight—if you ran away once, people would always be picking on you, because they would figure you wouldn't fight back. But something about the whole thing bothered me. I couldn't quite get hold of what it was. It kept coming to the edge of my brain and then slipping away before I could grab it. Normally I would have talked something like this over with Mom, but I wasn't so sure about that now. I had the feeling that she would take Uncle Foster's side. I didn't want to get into another argument with her about the Winchesters.

  But I needed somebody to talk to, and I decided to go see Marie Scalzo. Suddenly I realized that I hadn't seen her since all of this had started. I wondered why. Usually if we missed seeing each other for a couple of days, one of us would call the other one. But I hadn't called her, and she hadn't called me. That was funny. Why hadn't I called her? Why hadn't she called me?

  Durham was still gone with the vet. I went back down to where I'd been working when I'd spotted Duchess and finished up the mowing. Durham wasn't back yet, and he hadn't told me what he wanted me to do next. I went down to the gatehouse, ate some lunch, and then I got on my bike and rode into town, past the cedars that ran along the estate, past the dairy farms that came next. It was hot, and the breeze I got from riding felt good. Finally I came into Main Street, went by the Five and Ten, The Bootery, and turned up Mechanic Street. Scalzo's Grocery was a couple of blocks up, in a neighborhood of two- and three-storey wooden houses that the Winchesters had built for the workers during World War I. Business was booming then, because of the war, and they had had to provide housing to get workers to come to Everidge from Boston, Hartford, and New York. One family lived on each floor. I'd been in these places often enough, visiting guys from school, and I knew what they were like. They'd have two bedrooms usually, one for the kids and one for the parents. There'd be a living room, dining room, and kitchen with linoleum, a cracked sink, and old refrigerator. They were comfortable enough places, but not very big, and if there were a lot of kids in the family, somebody would have to sleep in the living room on a convertible sofa. But people liked living in those places because they were cheap. If they got laid off for some reason, they could usually scrape together enough money to make the rent.

  Scalzo's Grocery was in the bottom floor of one of those buildings. The family lived upstairs over the store. They were lucky, because there were a couple of storerooms behind the store. Marie's brother, Frankie, slept in one of those rooms, so Marie and her little sister could have the bedroom upstairs.

  I stopped in front of the store and locked my bike to a telephone pole. Then I went in. It was an old store. Mr. Scalzo had got it from a relative or something, and it had been around for a long time, since right after World War II. There were shelves of cans and packages around three sides of it—cans of coffee and jars of mustard and boxes of rice and flour. Across the back was the delicatessen case, and a marble counter ran down one side. The counter was loaded with baskets of pepperoni, wheels of cheese, a carton of bread, a jar of pickles. I liked going in there; it smelled spicy and delicious. Mr. Scalzo said it was rough competing against the supermarkets because he couldn't match their prices, but a lot of people felt more comfortable going into a family store, especially if they could run up a bill and pay it off every two weeks on payday.

  Mr. Scalzo was talking to a customer at the counter, and Marie was behind the delicatessen case, weighing out a chunk of parmesan cheese for an old woman. She didn't notice me come in, and I stood there by the door, watching her. She was wearing a white apron over her T-shirt and jeans, smudged in a couple of spots with mustard where she'd wiped her hands after making somebody a sandwich. She said something to the woman in Italian. Then she took the piece of cheese off the scales, put it down on a sheet of white butcher paper, and began to wrap it up. She'd done it so often, her hands twinkled as they flew around the cheese, and her dark brown hair wavered a little as she tipped her head this way and that to see that she had got the hunk of cheese properly wrapped. I liked watching her do it. She looked cute, concentrating like that.

  She handed the cheese to the old woman and then she noticed me. “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi,” I said. I walked back to the counter. She got out a salami, turned on the slicer, and began to slice it. “Can you get away for a little while, or are you stuck?”

  She glanced at her dad. “Maybe,” she said. “In a couple of minutes.” I stood off to the side to be out of the way. In a minute she finished with the old woman. She rang up the amount and counted out the change. Then she took off her apron, bundling it up on the shelf under the counter. “Dad, I'm going out back with Chris for a minute,” she said.

  “Don't be long,” he said.

  We went through the back of the store, into a kind of dirt backyard they had. Grass wouldn't grow there. An old ash tree grew in the middle of it, and under the ash tree Mr. Scalzo had built a picnic table and benches. They had a charcoal grill, and hot summer nights they'd cook hot dogs and hamburgers out there. I'd eaten with them plenty of times there.

  We sat down at the picnic table facing each other, holding hands. “What happened between you and Benny Briggs, Chris?”

  “How did you know about that?”

  “Everybody knows,” she said. “It's all over town. Everybody's talking about it. Benny and his dad are making a big thing out of it.”

  I hated to hear that. It was going to put me in the middle even worse. “I wish everybody wouldn't make such a big deal out of it. Benny and those guys were swimming in the pond, and my cousin told them to get out.”

  She frowned. “That's not what Benny says. He says the caretaker sicced a dog on them. Benny said he picked up a branch and clubbed the dog, otherwise he'd have torn them to pieces.”

  “That's completely untrue,” I said. I was beginning to feel sore. It was bad enough as it was—why did Benny have to make it worse? “It wasn't like that at all. The caretaker heard the noise and came out with the dog. He kept t
he dog on the leash the whole time.”

  “Well, that's not what Benny says.”

  I looked at her. “Are you going to believe me or Benny Briggs?”

  She looked down. “Don't get sore at me. I didn't say that. Benny did.”

  “Well, who do you believe?” I said. “Me or Benny?”

  “No, I believe you, Chris. What exactly happened?”

  “Just what I said. My cousin and I were walking down to the gatehouse and we heard this noise in the pond. He wanted to go in after Benny. I tried to talk him out of it, but I couldn't. Then the caretaker came.”

  “Benny says you and your cousin jumped in after them with sticks.”

  “Not true. We never went into the water.” I didn't want to lie to her if I could help it. “We would have gone after them, but we didn't have any sticks. It would have been two of us against three. But then the caretaker came.” I hoped that it being two against three would give her some idea that we had been willing to take a pretty big chance. “Did you know that somebody came up there last night and poisoned the dog? I found her this morning.”

  “I wouldn't blame them,” she said. “If it was me, I'd have done it, too.”

  “Marie, didn't you hear me the first time? Durham didn't sic the dog on anyone. That's a lie.”

  “Don't shout, Chris. Everybody can hear you.”

  “Well, I'm sick of the whole thing. Benny's making up this whole story so he'll be in the right. He had no business going up there to swim, anyway.”

  “What was the harm in it?” Marie said. She was beginning to get mad, too. We were headed for a fight, which was exactly what I didn't want. I just wanted somebody to talk to who understood my point of view. But it didn't seem like she did, any more than Uncle Foster did. “Marie, they can't let anybody come out to swim who wants to.”

  “Benny and those guys weren't hurting anything. Why should the Winchesters have that whole pond to themselves?”