In the Still of the Night: Tales to Lock Your Doors By

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  “You kicked me in the teeth,” Christopher said. “I think you’ve ruined my needle act.”

  “Sorry,” she said, although she wasn’t. The needle act was disgusting. “Christopher, could we try and catch up with that other car and see where it goes?”

  “What about getting help for that poor old man back there?” Pure sarcasm.

  “We can send it. And if he’s dead, he’s dead, isn’t he?”

  A snowball had a better chance in hell than they had of catching the other car, so Christopher said he’d try.

  Maggie studied the road map under the flashlight. “You know what? We’ll be coming into Williamson soon. I’ll bet the train stops there and that’s where they’ll meet up. I’ll bet I’m right.”

  “And what if you are? What do we do then?”

  “I wish we had a gun,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I told you once, my father’s a deputy sheriff. He’s a farmer, but he’s also a deputy sheriff.”

  “I don’t like guns and I don’t like deputy sheriffs,” Christopher said. “Process servers, that’s all they are.”

  “All the same,” Maggie said. Then: “I’ll bet that was a mailbag they snatched. The way he waved his arms—that could be how the old man did it every night.”

  “Okay, tell me something if you’re so smart,” the magician said. “Why bump the old guy off first? Why not grab the mailbag from him after the train’s gone through and nobody’s around? If it was a mailbag.”

  “Because …” Maggie said slowly, “they didn’t mean to kill him. He was asleep and they just wanted to make sure he stayed that way and didn’t see who they were. I’ll bet they live around here. It’s Christmas and they’re broke. There was bound to be money in the mail. Christopher, can’t we go any faster?”

  “You make me nervous every time you say Christopher. We got about five miles left before she boils dry again.”

  “There could be a reward, you know, and we’d split it,” Maggie said. “Hey! Where’s your stage gun, the one you shoot the rabbit with?” It was another of his tricks that Maggie didn’t like. She was pretty sure he had a deaf rabbit because of it.

  “It’s in the green metal box with the silks,” he said. “Just don’t upset the goddamn livestock.”

  Maggie, her knees on the seat, flashlight in hand, began the search for the green box. A car passed, going the opposite direction.

  “That’s your guy going back to pick up his buddy on the tracks.”

  “No,” Maggie said. Through a small space between boxes she saw the train running parallel to them, sometimes quite close. She prayed they wouldn’t have to cross the tracks again before Williamson. They’d never make it to the crossing first. She also prayed she could find the green box. She shone the flashlight into the sad, pink eyes of the rabbit where he stared out the window of his case.

  “Williamson’s a ghost town since the Depression,” Christopher said. “The train won’t stop there.”

  “Want to bet?” She spotted the green metal box on the floor. It was underneath three suitcases and the Chinese Head Chopper. She had to change places with the rabbit to get to it. Talk about Alice in Wonderland. It took a long time but she got the box out. By then her fingers were numb.

  “Williamson, three miles,” Christopher read a road sign.

  “Any sign of their car?”

  “I can see a taillight if that’s what you mean.”

  “It’s theirs,” she said with conviction, changing places again with the rabbit. She got out the gun and four blank cartridges, wedged the box between the rabbit and the cage of turtledoves, and loaded a cartridge. That was all the starter’s pistol would take at a time.

  “I must be crazy to give you that,” Christopher said. “What do you think you’re going to do with it?”

  “Just have it.”

  They were losing ground to the train, running even at the moment with the caboose.

  “Try and keep up, Christopher. Maybe I’ll catch sight of him.”

  Christopher swore at damn-fool women who thought they were Annie Oakleys.

  Williamson was a ghost town, to judge by the outskirts. The streetlights were dead—empty, broken globes. Houses were boarded up. Even the billboards were bare. But the train was slowing down, its whistle sharp and measured, a distinct signal. A trainman came out onto the caboose platform and began to work what seemed to be levers. A noisy shudder ran the length of the train.

  “It’s stopping,” Maggie said, and they were passing car after car now. Between two of the cars she glimpsed a figure with a great hump on his back. “I see him!” she cried. “I’ll bet he jumps before they stop.”

  “He’ll kill himself if he does. He must be frozen stiff.”

  Suddenly they lost complete sight of the train where the road made a hairpin turn, going steeply downhill. When they saw it again it was dead ahead, stopped across the tracks.

  A thin row of high-slung lights lined the station platform. Light shone from the stationmaster’s office, but the rest of what once was an elegant gabled building was in spooky darkness. The car Maggie convinced herself they had followed was parked next to the platform. Christopher wouldn’t drive near it.

  “Okay, park and we’ll walk,” Maggie said. “Just pretend we’re going to report the old man to the stationmaster.”

  “I’m not pretending. That’s all I am going to do.” He turned the Chevy around and parked facing the highway which continued parallel to the tracks. Main Street crossed the tracks down into the town. “If anything happens run like hell back here. They’ll find that old man without us.”

  Maggie trudged to the platform, passing close to the parked car. She didn’t go right up to look but she couldn’t see anyone in it. Maybe it wasn’t their car at all. The train let out an enormous sigh, every car simultaneously. Down the platform, on the other side of the office a man in a railway cap and a sheepskin coat was handing up bags from a Railway Express wagon. Behind Maggie the crossing bell was clanging furiously as though it could waken a dead town. More than half the train stretched out of sight beyond the Main Street crossing.

  She looked around to see where Christopher was. He had cut over in front of the parked car and was striding along the platform toward where the baggage was being loaded. She’d be willing to bet he wouldn’t even mention the man they’d seen jumping the train. She ran to catch up with him but cast a glance over her shoulder every few steps. The magician and the stationmaster were talking when she looked back and saw two men running alongside the tracks, their figures caught for the moment in the crossing light. They were headed for the parked car.

  She shouted, “Christopher!” He paid no attention. She ran back. The men separated, one on a beeline to the car and the other headed, stiff-legged, for the highway. No, she realized, he was heading for Christopher’s car. She dug the pistol out of her pocket and fired its single shot. A pop. A mere pop. Another cartridge might be louder but she was too shaken to reload. Her heart felt like it was beating itself to death, but she ran full speed for the Chevrolet. The other car roared into motion behind her. Its lights circled her: the driver meant to run her down or scare her off the road. She flung herself toward the bushes and kept rolling over and over. By the time she was safe and recovered her senses, both cars were heading onto the highway and on back the way they’d come. Christopher was running from the station, shouting “Stop! You thieving bastards, stop!”

  Maggie picked herself up and made it to where the magician was sobbing with rage.

  “He almost ran me over,” Maggie said.

  “They’ve got my rabbit! They’ve got my whole goddamn life! What have you done to me, Maggie?”

  She didn’t say anything until the lights of both cars disappeared. Then her mind began to work again. “What do they want with your car anyway? They won’t take it far. All they want is a head start so we can’t follow them again. Come on, Chris,” she coaxed. “Take one more chance on me. Let’s
hike as far as the turn in the road.” She hooked her arm through his and pulled him forward.

  “Don’t call me Chris,” he muttered.

  As they neared the turn, the whole valley below them seemed swathed in a shimmering mist, a few pinpricks of light showing through. It was like an upside-down sky. “Isn’t it beautiful?” Maggie exclaimed.

  “Shut up,” Christopher said.

  But when they rounded the curve he cried out, “By God, you’re right! There she is!”

  The Chevy sat in stubborn majesty, her radiator against the guardrail of the overlook.

  Christopher turned the car around and refilled the radiator from the milk can. Maggie got in and thought about how long it had been since she’d got out of bed the previous morning. She had pawned her watch in Danbury, Connecticut, in October and lost the ticket in Framingham, Massachusetts, but she had a Baby Ben alarm clock in her book bag. She reached for it and knew at once that what was at her feet was not her book bag.

  She sat very still and didn’t say a word until they were about to pass the Williamson station. “Christopher, you’d better stop.”

  “No, ma’am,” he said.

  “My book bag is gone. They’ve taken it.”

  “Hurray for them.”

  She pulled the bag at her feet up onto her lap.

  “What’s that?” he said, and then, “Oh, my God.”

  He slammed on the brakes and even by what was left of the moonlight they could read the marking, U.S. MAIL.

  “I reckon we’ll get your books back for you, ma’am,” the sheriff of Mingo County said, “but I can’t guarantee it’ll be by noon.” Noontime was the hour at which the best garage repairman in Tug River Valley had promised a mended radiator and two new tires. The sheriff figured that in due time the Norfolk and Western Railway might just pay for them. “But you’ll be yonder by a long ways then.”

  The magician and Maggie had had a few hours’ sleep at opposite ends of an old leather sofa in the sheriff’s office. His wife had brought them a wonderful breakfast of ham, fried cornmeal mush, and eggs, with coffee enough to keep them awake all the way to the Michigan state line. The rabbit nibbled carrots from the woman’s root cellar, the doves traveled with their own supply of birdseed. Christopher took a five-dollar gold piece out of the sheriff’s wife’s ear and put it in her apron pocket—to give her kids for Christmas.

  “I knew when I heard your story,” the sheriff summed things up, “it had to be the McCoy brothers. They weren’t ever known to do anything the easy way if they could find a hard one. And folks got to thank the good Lord that most times they’re just plain unlucky. Like your turning up tonight. A couple of years back they aimed to rob the local bank. They squeezed themselves through the ventilating system during the night and was inside waiting for the manager to open up the next morning. Only trouble, that was the day President Roosevelt closed every bank in the country. Nobody opened up. Some people round here blamed it on the McCoys at first. Dang near lynched them. They’d’ve saved us a pack of trouble since if they had.”

  The sheriff took off his hat, scratched his head, and put his hat back on again. “It may turn out the best luck they ever did have was you finding the old man. They could hang for that if he don’t pull through. But that old man is tougher than all the McCoys put together. It won’t surprise me none if he lives to be state’s witness.”

  Maggie and Christopher looked at one another. Then Maggie asked the question: “What’s the old man’s name, Sheriff?”

  “Smith. Just plain Willie Smith.”

  The Scream

  SALLY HAD CALLED HIM a “mother’s boy” when he wanted to leave the party at eleven. It hurt and angered him, but what angered him most was that he hadn’t left right then. He stayed on as though that was going to change her feelings toward him. She’d turned her attention to guys he didn’t even know and didn’t think she did. She said she’d hitch a ride in one of the other cars. Now he was really late. He drove up the ravine trail furiously, scattering stones and gravel, ripping through the bramble. Midnight wasn’t late for that gang, even on a school night, even though they’d lost the beer to the cops who had intercepted them on the way down. He had an old-fashioned mother who pretended she wasn’t a single parent. Sometimes she told people her husband was away on business. But sometimes, when she and David were alone, she would call him the man of the house and say how much she depended on him.

  As soon as he cleared the park drive he opened up the Chevy. He’d got in the habit of worrying about his mother when he didn’t get home on time. This angered him, too. What he worried about was her worrying about him, and it made him feel tied up. Or down. He kept flooring the accelerator until he turned off the highway onto a two-way shortcut via the old County Road.

  He thought of Sally and the guy who’d been trying to make out with her when David took off. He was a wimp. David hated him. Sally seemed to like wimps. She had an overload of energy and breasts like ice cream cones. He hit top speed again. Nobody used the County Road except the locals. With not a car in sight, he reached into his breast pocket and fished out the orange packet. He rolled down the window thinking, One more for the road: his joke on himself. He had yet to use one of the damn things in a real situation, yet to suggest to Sally or any other woman that he had one in his pocket. He threw it out against the wind and felt immediately that it might have blown back into the car. He glanced around. In less than a breath of time he turned back to the road. A car, dead ahead, no lights, had stopped half on the pavement, half on the shoulder. He swerved across the middle line, then starting to careen, he let the wheel take control. The Chevy swung back and he saw the woman coming around in front of the parked car. He saw her scream. Didn’t hear it. Her face, the mouth wide, seemed to zoom at him. He pulled the car away from her and fought to control it by acceleration. The woman flung herself against her car, sandwiched between it and the Chevy when he passed. He got command, his hands frozen around the steering wheel. He was faint with fear, but he hadn’t hit her. He was sure of it. He would have heard something, a thump, a noise, something, if he had. He was sure of it. He did not stop.

  “Davie, is that you? Are you just getting in?”

  “I’ve been downstairs for a while,” he lied. He squeezed the words through a dry, tight throat.

  “Then you should have finished your studies before you went out.”

  “I know.” At her bedroom door he said, “Good night, Mother.”

  “I need a kiss,” she said, and when he brushed her forehead with his lips, “Now I’ll be able to sleep.”

  He drew the door almost closed. The cat wriggled through and followed him down the hall. It wove itself between his legs in the bathroom and then rubbed against him when he sat on the edge of his bed to take off his sneakers. As soon as he removed one, the cat jumped it and worried its head into the toe.

  “Allie, it stinks!” He buried his face in the crook of his arm. “Like me.”

  He woke up before he finished the Our Father. In the next second the spiraling plane would have hit the ground. He lay, abruptly wide awake, knowing what he had dreamt, and wondered why he had not been scared. He’d felt calm and oblivious to the other passengers, who were also about to die. “Forgive us our trespasses …” Suddenly he remembered the face he’d kept seeing while he lay in bed last night, unable to fall asleep, the scream he couldn’t hear. If he looked at the wall now he would see it again. If he closed his eyes he would see it. He wrenched himself out of bed. Every bone in his body ached. Every muscle was taut.

  His mother called to him from downstairs wanting to know if he was up. She had called him before and he had fallen back into sleep, into the dream. He leaned over the banister and shouted down that he’d be ready in ten minutes. In the shower he told himself that he must go back to where it happened. What good would it do now? He couldn’t have hurt her. She’d have been scared, fainted maybe. But how could he not have hurt her? With him going at that speed, the wi
nd could have pulled her to him. But he’d have known it, felt it. And if he had, wouldn’t he have stopped? He had not stopped. That was why he had to go back.

  David resembled his mother. He was slight, with straight, tawny hair, very blue eyes. The sharp, delicate features made him feel that he looked like a choirboy. He’d got in the habit of pulling down the corners of his mouth. Tough guy, his mother said of it once, which was exactly what he wanted. The one thing he didn’t want now was his mother getting a good look at his bloodshot eyes. “I had an awful dream before I woke up,” he said. It might explain or distract.

  She sat, her chin in her hand, and watched him pour milk shakily into his cornflakes, not seeming to notice anything different in him from other mornings. She was dressed for work, waiting for her ride to arrive any minute. “Want to sort it out?” she said.

  “I was going down in a plane crash. There were lots of people screaming, but I wasn’t scared.” He’d made up the screaming part. He couldn’t remember them screaming.

  “What else do you remember? Little things,” she coaxed. She liked to interpret his dreams for him. She had done it since he was a little kid, a game he kind of liked.

  Now he wished he hadn’t mentioned this one. “I woke up before we crashed.”

  “If you weren’t scared, what were your feelings?”

  He shrugged. “Like philosophical. I said the Our Father.” He pushed away from the table. “Mom, I got to go. Professor Joseph always calls first on the kids who come in at the last minute. We call him Sneaky Joe.”

  “You miss your father. That’s what your dream’s about.”

  “Yeah.” He got up. The cornflakes barely touched, he put the dish on the floor for the cat.

  “Why don’t you write and tell him that, Davie?”

  Again he shrugged.

  “I know you could tell him things you don’t tell me,” his mother said.

  “Okay, Mom, I’ll do that.” He was desperate to get away from her. He couldn’t even manage the usual peck on the cheek.