by Peter Straub
“Mr. Sawyer is a sour old creature,” Nolly said. “He’d sooner kick you than say a kind word, which he never does.”
“Where does he live?”
“I usually see him in the vicinity of Leather Lane. But when he goes to ground, he goes to ground like a fox.”
“All right,” I said, and stood up. Nolly urged me toward the door and slid it open. I stepped into the lane, and, to my surprise, he slipped outside behind me. What I could see of his face looked like a catcher’s mitt. He glanced from side to side and whispered something so quietly I merely saw his lips move.
I bent down, and he put his mouth close to my ear. “From what I heard, it was you seen two nights ago in Fish Lane with Joe Staggers from the town of Mountry.”
“It might have been,” I whispered, realizing that these kids heard everything.
“Joe Staggers has not been seen again. Which has caused no tears to fall. Not in Hatchtown. Nor in Mountry, either, I figure.”
“The gentleman was called away,” I said.
“It must have been a powerful call.”
What was Nolly doing, what was he looking for? “Too powerful for him, anyhow.”
“A gun was fired, but no one was hit,” Nolly said. “That’s not your way, is it?”
“Nolly,” I whispered, “do you want to tell me something?”
He hitched up one shoulder and tugged at the waistband of his trousers. He shifted his feet and jerked his head back and forth. In an imitation of Frenchy La Chapelle even better than the lookout’s, he pulled at his sleeves and squinted as if trying to see around the curve in the lane. Frenchy had been one of these children, I realized, he had spent his nights in the old lavender warehouse and performed occasional services for B.D., the Hatchtown vampire. I thought Frenchy had continued to perform these services for the remainder of his wretched life.
Nolly was still trying to peer around the corner. “Do you know Horsehair?”
I shook my head.
“Horsehair is small, and it is dark. Horsehair winds back and forth. In Horsehair, you can get to where you are going without no one knowing you are already gone. The general public never sees it, on account of its being the kind of thing it is.” Nolly again tilted his mouth to my ear. “He uses Horsehair. So if you wanted to find him, which I never did, you could maybe find him there.”
“Where is it?”
“Everywhere,” Nolly whispered. “For one example, right there.” He pointed a grubby hand at a barely visible gap between two buildings and vanished back into the warehouse.
109
I stepped inside the space Nolly had shown me. Ahead, a dark, narrow artery stretched out for twenty feet or more before curving leftward. I felt as though Nolly Wheadle had shown me the secret within the secret, the key to Hatchtown’s true interior. Horsehair brought me to Raspberry, then into desolate little Barrel Lane, and from there on a winding trail leading, I hoped, in the direction of Veal Yard. Sounds from other lanes reverberated off the narrow walls. A stench like that of Joy’s house came to me, then sank back into the bricks. From somewhere near, I heard a man humming “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” and thought it was Piney Woods, staggering down Leather Lane. When at last I emerged into Veal Yard, I saw Horsehair opening like a paper cut beyond the dry fountain and knew how Edward Rinehart had witnessed Robert’s first appearance before me.
6 HOW I SPENT MY BIRTHDAY
110
The next morning I wished myself a happy thirty-fifth birthday and hoped I would live to see thirty-six. When it came to birthday presents, you couldn’t beat survival. After I dressed for Toby’s funeral in a clean white shirt, gray trousers, a rep tie, and my blazer, I picked up the telephone and got the number for the Fortress Military Academy in Owlsburg, Pennsylvania. Who was W. Wilson Fletcher, I wondered, and how did Rinehart get his book? If Fletcher had made it through World War II, he was probably still alive, and he might remember giving the book to a fellow student.
I told Captain Lighthouse in the Alumni Office that I was doing background for an arts-page feature in the Edgerton Echo concerning the world’s most extensive H. P. Lovecraft collection. For a sidebar tracing the history of the cornerstone of the great collection, a first edition of The Dunwich Horror, I wished to speak to its original owner, W. Wilson Fletcher, who had inscribed the book with his name, the name of the academy, and the year 1941.
“Sir, did Fletcher inscribe his name without indication of rank?”
“Just his name.”
“Then he was a pledge. Let me check the Alumni Directory.” He put me on hold. “W. Wilson Fletcher is not listed in the Directory, which means one of two things. Either he is deceased, or he fell through the cracks, which is something we don’t like to happen. 1941, you said?”
“Right.” I resisted the temptation to say “Affirmative.”
“I’ll look up the class lists for 1941 and the years on either side.”
I asked Lighthouse if he was an academy graduate.
“Affirmative,” he said. “Class of 1970. Did my twenty years and came back to help out my old school. I love this place, I really do. Let’s see, now. 1941, no, not there. Maybe he was Artillery that year, which would put him in the class of ’42. Yep, there he is, Wilbur Wilson Fletcher, class of 1942. No wonder he used the W. I take it that you will be mentioning the academy in your article?”
“Of course,” I said.
“If you don’t mind being put on hold again, I want to check a few other sources. The Fortress Academy Roll of Honor will tell us if Fletcher was killed in action during his military service. If that fails, I’ll try Major Audrey Arndt, the Academy’s executive secretary. The major has been here since 1938, and she remembers everything and everybody. This place could hardly run without her. Do you mind waiting?”
“Not at all. I’m surprised you’re still on the campus.”
“My job goes year-round, and the major doesn’t believe in vacations. Hold on, sir.”
Captain Lighthouse kept me on hold for ten minutes. It seemed like enough time to wallpaper my room. I gathered that Wilbur had not helped raise the flag at Iwo Jima or won the Congressional Medal of Honor. I carried the telephone to the table and for the first time noticed that someone had carved, with a careful, almost witty precision, his initials and a date into its surface. P.D. 10/17/58. P.D. had done an elegant job. The almost calligraphically incised letters and numbers ran in an arc along the table’s edge, so small as to go unnoticed unless you were looking directly at them. P.D., I gathered, had been excruciatingly bored. I wondered if he had been a musician waiting for the start of a concert.
The line clicked, and a muted Captain Lighthouse told me, “Major Arndt is on the line.” Another click.
An authoritative female voice said, “Major Arndt here, Mr. Dunstan. Please explain your interest in Pledge Fletcher.”
I repeated my story. “I was hoping to talk to Mr. Fletcher, and I thought the academy could give me his telephone number.”
“Mr. Dunstan, the Fortress Military Academy is pleased to cooperate with the press, but cooperation works both ways. I want your assurance that what I am about to tell you will be handled discreetly and tastefully. And you will agree to fax me a draft of your article previous to publication.”
My skin prickled. “Agreed.”
“Unwittingly, I assume, Mr. Dunstan, you refer to the single unhappiest incident in the history of the Fortress Academy. Artillery Pledge Fletcher died as the result of an assault by an intruder shortly before the Christmas break of 1941. His assailant was never identified. As a result, this fine institution was subjected to a great deal of unwelcome publicity.”
“You don’t say.”
“I would prefer that you make no mention of Artillery Pledge Fletcher’s death in your article. More realistically, I ask you to describe it as an unfortunate tragedy, and leave it at that.”
“Major Arndt,” I said, “nothing in my piece requires me to dig up a fifty-year-old scandal.
There is one more favor I’d like to ask, and I promise you, the same conditions will apply.”
“Proceed,” she said.
“Pledge Fletcher can’t tell me how he acquired or disposed of the book, but some of his classmates may be able to fill in the gaps. If you would consent to fax me the 1939 to 1941 class lists from the Alumni Directory, I can take it from there. Nothing I might hear about the circumstances of Fletcher’s demise will appear in the article. I’m only interested in the fate of the book.”
“You are going to squander a great deal of time, Mr. Dunstan.”
“Here at the Echo, Major, we practically eat time,” I said.
111
A Ford identical to mine drifted toward the long line of cars on the shimmering drive. Attired in a charcoal-gray wool suit and a gray felt hat, C. Clayton Creech took in the assembled gathering with his customary matchless cool. I glanced at the headstone next to Toby’s grave. HENRIETTA “QUEENIE” DUNSTAN KRAFT, 1914–1964, A VIRTUOSO NEVER TO BE SURPASSED.
“Between you and me,” I said to Creech, “how much of a crook was Toby, actually?”
“Indicted only once,” Creech drawled. “Bum rap.”
Down the slope, my Taurus’s doppelgänger parked at the end of the row of cars. Mr. Tite emerged from the driver’s seat and opened the door for Helen Janette.
“Had nothing to do with the adoption business,” I said.
“Hazel kept her mouth shut.” Creech had not so much as glanced down the slope.
“What was it, then?”
“Jive bullshit.”
Helen Janette and her guard dog reached the top of the slope. Frank Tite pretended not to notice that Helen was walking toward me.
The lawyer tipped his hat. “Good day, Mrs. Janette.”
“Mr. Creech, I have something to say to your friend.” She motioned me aside. “I want to apologize for the way I behaved the night of the fire. I was a miserable old woman, and I couldn’t think straight.”
“It must have been terrible for you,” I said.
“Lose everything you own, you’ll learn the meaning of terrible. I don’t understand why that La Chapelle boy went so crazy.”
“You knew him?”
“Frenchy grew up right around the corner. Him and Clyde Prentiss, knee-deep in trouble from day one.”
The last of the mourners joined the throng behind Toby’s grave. All but two or three of them were black, and everyone had dressed for the occasion.
“It starts with Hatchtown,” said Helen Janette. “Who needs a convention center? Stewart Hatch should tear down the whole place, rebuild it from the ground up. Or at least fix those properties. Your family would be happy to see some work done on Cherry Street, too, wouldn’t they?”
“With them, you never know,” I said. “But why would Hatch have anything to do with it?”
She said, “Okay, never mind,” and left me.
Mr. Spaulding stationed himself beside the open grave. The quiet hum of conversation from the mourners ceased.
“Dear friends and neighbors, Mr. Kraft declined the services of a clergyman at his last rites, but he welcomed spontaneous reflections from those who have assembled here. If you care to express your feelings, step up and speak from the heart.”
A little stir came from the crowd, and an elderly woman came forward. She raised her head, and sunlight sparkled off her glasses.
“Toby Kraft was not what I could call a close, personal friend, but I appreciated the man. He was honest with his customers. He treated a person with respect. He had a generous heart, too. Toby had a rough side, but I know there were times he offered a helping hand to lots of us here today.” The crowd murmured affirmation. “In my opinion, Toby Kraft was a man who made a contribution. That’s all I have to say.”
One after another, seven other people moved up beside the grave and spoke about Toby. A white-haired man said, “Toby never appeared to be a romantic or a sentimental man, but no one could say he did not have a deep love for his wife.”
I asked Creech if he had known Queenie.
“Toby was completely smitten,” he said. “She could make his jaw drop open and his eyes spin around in his head. They had me to dinner many times, and Queenie’s sweet-potato pie was like nothing I have tasted before or since.” Creech smiled, more to himself than at me. “Hers was the only pie I ever observed rise an inch or two above the table, as if begging to be eaten.”
The last speaker said, “Mr. Kraft acted like he ate hubcaps and razor blades for breakfast, but he was on our side. He once told me, ‘Georgia, I may be a son of a bitch,’ excuse my French, ‘but watching out for you is part of my job.’ He helped pay for my husband’s funeral. When my daughter went to Morehouse, he sent her money every week and never asked for anything in return. I say, Toby Kraft was a good, good man.”
Mr. Spaulding sifted through the crowd to shake hands with his future customers. People moved down toward their cars.
“Toby was an excellent fellow, all in all,” said C. Clayton Creech. He gave me a lizardlike glance. “I trust you do not regret your decisions of the other day?”
“Toby would have approved,” I said.
“I always enjoyed that whimsical streak of his. Most of my clients resist whimsy. As the years go by, I more and more appreciate evidence of the imaginative faculty.”
We moved down the slope. “What was the reason he went to jail?” I asked.
Creech’s car keys twinkled in his milk-white hand. “I suppose he possessed enough imagination to recognize he had no other choice.”
112
The aunts were bustling back and forth in front of the stove. Splendid in a canary-yellow sports jacket, Clark looked up from the table. “Look here, boy, I got a new coat to celebrate your birthday!”
Nettie sang out, “Happy Birthday!” and bussed my cheek. May said, “Stay right there, I’ll get your present.”
“Old Toby’s funeral was a lonely business, I reckon,” said Clark.
“No, a lot of people turned up,” I said. “Some of them spoke about how much he loved Queenie.”
“You can’t take that away from him,” said Nettie. “From the moment Toby Kraft laid eyes on my sister, he was a man under a spell.”
“And I wanted to ask you something,” I said.
May returned with a plastic bag bearing the logo of a local grocery store. She looked almost coquettish. “When I gave you those socks and undergarments, Ned, I was keeping a secret for your birthday.”
“You’re giving me a secret for my birthday?”
“It won’t be a secret any longer.” She pulled from the bag a pink sports jacket randomly imprinted with golf bags, golf clubs, and greens with flags jutting from the cups. Grenville Milton would have drooled.
I shrugged off my blazer and got into May’s pink extravaganza. It was exactly my size.
“Damn, boy,” Clark said. “Now you look like you know how to have a good time.”
“And there’s another treat,” said Nettie. “Sweet-potato pie. Mine is as good as Queenie’s, you wait and see.”
“What else do we have in the works?” I asked.
“Dry-rubbed pork ribs and my black-eyed peas. May brought over homemade bread. There’s the marshmallow salad from The Ladies of Galilee Cook Book, and we still have plenty of that tuna casserole from yesterday. There is no need to worry about food.”
“We deserve a feast, after all our sorrows,” Clark said. “Now that he has passed away, I miss old Toby more than I expected I would. Is there any progress on bringing his murderer to justice?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Jack the Ripper is running around Edgerton, but the police won’t admit it. Tell you why. The news would alarm the populace.”
“It isn’t only Jack the Ripper,” Nettie said, sounding ominous.
“No, sir. Take the events in College Park last night.”
I felt as though I had been stung by a bee. “What events?”
�
�Around one A.M., people up there heard a god-awful noise. A good many windows blew out of their frames. They say a light filled the sky, and that the light was blue.”
“It is undoubtedly a sign,” May said.
“A fellow on the radio this morning said the ruckus was brought on by an alien spacecraft. That idea deserves consideration.”
Through the kitchen window, I looked out at the paper tablecloth and jugs of Kool-Aid and iced tea on the old picnic table. “Too bad Joy can’t be here.”
“Joy wouldn’t talk to me this morning,” May said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she has had second thoughts about putting Clarence in that home.”
A premonitory tingle coursed through my chest, in its mildness suggesting that I had three or four hours before onset of the seizure. “Mr. Creech was at the funeral,” I said. “I asked him why Toby went to jail, but he wouldn’t talk.”
“Today,” Clark said, “we should remember the good things about the man, not his misdeeds.”
“Which were legion,” said Nettie.
“Numbered like the grains of sand on a beach,” said May. “Are we ready to start the festivities?”
On the other side of the picnic table, Clark made the most of a single black-eyed pea. Substantial piles of bones had accumulated on the aunts’ paper plates. My warning signals hummed quietly in the background. All of us felt the warm, expansive sensation that follows a satisfying meal. At the moment when I was thinking about bringing up Toby Kraft’s incarceration again, May did it for me.
“Nettie, do you remember? When Toby was sent away, Queenie still had that little icebox, and she was upset because she wouldn’t have the time to pick out a new one for six whole months? When Toby came back, I remember, he told Queenie to get a new icebox right away.”
“If he served only six months, his crime wasn’t very serious,” I said.
“Not only was his offense not serious,” May said, “he didn’t do it. Why would Toby Kraft break into another man’s house? If that was what he wanted, he would have had some fool do it for him.”