The Deadly Fields of Autumn

by Dorothy Bodoin

  My psychic collie.

  “Maybe she does.”

  Julia filled the teapot and set it on the stove while Misty followed me upstairs into the bathroom. I stepped out of the skirt and yanked the shell over my head. Ugh. They had his blood on them.

  I’d loved that skirt. Loved. Past tense. I tossed it on the floor on top of the shell. I couldn’t get it out of the house fast enough.

  Wait! I froze, aghast at what I’d been about to do. Blood… DNA… It could lead us to a match. If Black Beard had a record, we could identify him.

  I retrieved the discarded clothing and folded it neatly. That murderous jerk would rue the day he’d waved his bloody fist in my face.

  ~ * ~

  Julia and I lost ourselves in dinner preparations. A pot roast with rice, we decided, and blueberry pie for dessert. Julia loved to cook but had pretty much eaten in restaurants during her long stay abroad. She appeared to have recovered from our trauma and was encouraged by the possibility of our assailant being apprehended.

  As for myself I had a headache. Delayed reaction.

  I sprinkled sugar on the crust and put the pie in the oven. All this time Misty had stayed at my side, moving whenever I did, even though I’d changed into a clean dress.

  She knows, I thought.

  Incredibly, Crane also knew that something had happened even before I told him.

  “I had the strangest feeling that you were in danger,” he said. “Then it passed.”

  My psychic husband?

  “I thought I was the one who had forebodings,” I said.

  “I can’t explain it.” His voice acquired a steely edge, that deputy sheriff tone, and his gray eyes glittered with icy flecks. As I told him about the encounter, his eyes grew colder and colder. “That man isn’t going to get away with this. He left his blood behind. That’ll be his death sentence.”

  “I’ll settle for jail time,” I said. “Today was bad enough, but what if he’s the hit-and-run killer?”

  That reminded me of Charlotte. I’d forgotten about her disappearance in the harrowing events of the day.

  “That’s right,” Julia said. “Charlotte can identify him.”

  “We have to redouble our efforts to find her.”

  Julia nodded. “We have a dangerous maniac on the road, and… Oh, I have to take the freeway to school on Monday.”

  “Chances are you won’t meet up with him again,” I said.

  Julia looked worried. “Unless he trolls the freeway looking for victims. Female victims,” she added.

  Crane locked his gun in the cabinet. “Don’t worry. Sooner or later, we’re going to nail him.”

  ~ * ~

  If ever there was an evening when Brent’s company was needed, this was it. He hadn’t seen Julia since her return, which meant he hadn’t come over for several days. I missed his bluster and bonhomie.

  He had two enormous bouquets filled with orange roses and sunflowers. The dogs wagged their tails expectantly. Candy nudged his leg. “They’re in my jacket pocket,” he said, anticipating her concern.

  “My goodness,” Julia said as he hugged her. “They’re gorgeous. Thank you, Brent.”

  She was holding both of the bouquets, and they were in danger of getting crushed. I took them and hunted for two vases.

  “Something smells good,” Brent said.

  “It could be the pot roast or the blueberry pie.”

  Crane took his jacket. Brent quickly pulled three packages of treats from his pocket. “I have good stuff here. Liver, salmon, and turkey.”

  “Sit down, Fowler,” Crane said. “We have a lowlife to catch.”

  “Julia and I almost got killed today,” I added.

  We all found a seat, and I told them what had happened. The story grew more chilling in the retelling.

  “I never had to use that Halt! on a dangerous dog,” I said, “but I’m glad I had it today.”

  “He’s not going to forget that,” Brent said.

  “Mmm. I never considered that.” I didn’t need another enemy out there in the world plotting revenge. “Well, a little spraying of Halt! didn’t do any lasting damage.

  Except to his ego.

  “Besides, the deer did him in,” I added. “Will you give me in a hand in the kitchen, Julia?”

  Misty sprang up and followed us. How long would she shadow me? And Candy was beside her, but Candy’s attention was on the pot roast.

  “Crane will carve it,” I said, arranging carrots around the roast. “The rice is done. I hope the pie will be cool enough to eat.”

  Candy whined as if to remind me of something I’d forgotten. The roast, of course. She rested her chin on the counter as close as she dared get to it.

  Dogs and guests and the perfect moment to slice a pie—all mundane matters, and every one of them was easier to deal with than an elusive killer who nursed a grudge.

  ~ * ~

  I couldn’t fall asleep that night. An hour passed, then two.

  Don’t think about the time, I told myself. Think about lovely things.

  I closed my eyes, and the scene on the country road played itself in my mind, a variation on the theme.

  Julia couldn’t find the spray. And the deer was miles away. The man with the black beard waved his fist in my face, splattering me with his blood. He pulled a gun out of his pocket and aimed it at Misty who growled at him from the back seat.

  I woke up.

  Well, I’d fallen asleep after all. How real that dream had been! How close to mimicking a possibility.

  If I had forgotten the Halt! when I’d changed purses? If the deer had waited until dusk to leap?

  I reached out to touch Crane. To assure myself that he slept beside me. At the moment I was safe in the house. But I had to leave it eventually.

  Thirty-one

  Monday found me in my classroom at Marston High School, warm and dry, while a heavy rain pummeled the woods outside the window.

  The string of warm October days had broken. Ironically today’s short story, All Summer in a Day, dealt with rain on the planet Venus, as imagined by Ray Bradbury.

  On Bradbury’s Venus it had rained steadily for five long years. The sun was due to appear briefly on this particular day, after which the rain would return. Naturally that day of sunshine was a much-anticipated occasion for the sun-starved colonists.

  The story was really about cruelty, specifically children’s cruelty to one another, which had given me an idea to assign a composition on the subject of bullying. As Bradbury customarily packed multiple ideas into his work, I could see additional composition ideas suggested by this one short story.

  On the whole, my World Literature class was well-behaved with an occasional rebel who seized his chance to claim the limelight.

  “But that’s stupid,” Will said when we finished the reading. “That’s not how it is on Venus.”

  “How do you know?” demanded Tori. “Did you ever go there?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Did you?”

  “Yeah.”

  It was time to intervene, to introduce the concept of a willing suspense of disbelief in terms my tenth graders could understand.

  “Nobody knows for sure what the surface of Venus is like,” I said. “Therefore, science-fiction writers are free to describe planets any way they like. Please note the date on the board. That’s when Ray Bradbury wrote the story. He’s making a point. Who can tell me what it is?”

  “He’s talking about how mean people can be,” Judy said.

  Point taken.

  “Good,” I said. “Also how much pain people can cause others.”

  “And also ignorance,” pointed out Annemarie. “The kids didn’t realize what they were doing to Margot by locking her in the closet until they saw the sun for themselves.”

  I stole a glance at the dispirited scene on the other side of the window. Trees almost stripped of their leaves, broken branches lying on the soggy ground, and mud. This area, part of the school’s property,
was off-limits to the students, which naturally made it a favorite hang-out. I didn’t imagine it would be popular today.

  Like the earth people living on Venus, I longed for a glimpse of the sun.

  After additional discussion about remembered incidents of cruelty in their past classrooms, my students began writing their compositions. No one seemed at a loss for words. I had chosen my subject well. After all, the world was full of bullies. Here in Oakpoint, Michigan, Marston High School had its fair share.

  As the class fell silent and no one appeared to need help, my mind drifted to a place I definitely didn’t want to revisit.

  The man with the black beard was a bully. Selecting a victim who appeared vulnerable—a woman driving the speed limit on a freeway. Forcing her to stop on a lonely country road. Threatening her with physical harm. And damaging her vehicle. Don’t forget that.

  My car was at the dealership for repair, which meant that Leonora was driving this week, and I was more or less grounded until Crane or Julia came home.

  But for the timely intervention of the deer, I might not be in this room, teaching my class. And how often would a deer leap out of the wild and take down a killer? That was, quite definitely, an act of God.

  Lord, thank you for my life.

  I didn’t think the man was dead. A hard fall on a country road would probably not be fatal, although he might have broken a bone or two. He was still out there, still a bully, and for all their talk of revenge, what could Crane and Brent do? They didn’t know his name or anything about him.

  Julia had been able to give Mac Dalby, our friend on the police force, the approximate location of the freeway exit from which the man had followed me and forced me to stop. There was no black car on the country road, no telltale sign of blood—the rain would have taken care of that—and no dead deer. The incident might never have happened.

  I was glad the deer had gotten away uninjured.

  In my classroom, reasonably safe from danger, a feeling insinuated its way into my thoughts. A foreboding. I would meet him again, the man whose name I didn’t know, and this time I couldn’t count on the appearance of a roving deer.

  The bell rang. The composition wasn’t due until tomorrow, but a few papers landed haphazardly on my desk as the class hurried out of the door.

  Next was my rowdy American Lit class. For the first time ever I was happy to see them. They would keep me so busy that I wouldn’t have time for unpleasant thoughts.

  ~ * ~

  At home I looked out at my empty driveway and wished my car were there, washed clean of dark memories, with its window and damaged door repaired. Not that I had any place to go. A storm was brewing. I just wanted to be able to leave the house if it became necessary. What if one of the dogs got sick?

  You’d wait for Crane or Julia to get home.

  I probably should have arranged for a rental car. I could still do it. In the meantime, I’d get a head start on dinner.

  After stirring celery and carrots into the stew—the last step—I set it on the stove to cook and contemplated the haunted television. I hadn’t given it a thought lately.

  Sky whimpered as lightning knifed through the clouds. She scurried under the dining room table and waited, trembling, for the worst to happen.

  “It’s all right, baby,” I said, grateful that I didn’t have seven fearful collies.

  Maybe I shouldn’t turn the television on until the storm was over.

  Oh, well… Why not take a chance? It would probably be okay.

  I turned the ‘on’ knob, and a picture quivered into focus on the screen. It was the main street of Jubilee, quiet and dusty and, strangely, familiar. It might have been a street I’d once walked down in a town I knew well.

  Horses tethered outside the Nugget, a saloon, waited patiently for their riders to return. The door of the barber shop opened, and a cowboy strutted out. Welcome lights shone from inside the Pink Palace Hotel. A dog leaped up on a wagon and started barking.

  Happily, I settled down in the rocker to see what was happening in Susanna’s world, hoping to catch a glimpse of Luke.

  Pedestrians strolled along wooden plank sidewalks, most of them intent on their destinations, some of them dawdling. I saw Susanna in her green-striped dress talking to an older lady clad in black with silver curls spilling out of her bonnet.

  The peaceful scene shattered with a thunder of hooves and a cloud of dust as four horsemen rode into town, their faces covered with dark bandanas. Townspeople melted into the background.

  The riders dismounted, guns drawn, and burst into the Jubilee bank which looked like every bank I’d ever seen in a Western movie. A veritable giant with a gruff, take-no-prisoners voice, demanded money of the thin bespectacled man who’d been taken unaware.

  “Hand it over,” he barked.

  “W-we don’t have any money yet this morning, the bank clerk said. “If you come back later…”

  The robber aimed his gun at the unfortunate man’s face.

  From outside the bank I heard gunfire, followed by a scream that went on and on.

  And from outside the house, in my world, lightning electrified the sky. The picture vanished. The screen was dark.

  Was that it? One short scene?

  For heaven’s sake! The movie always stopped at a pivotal point. Were the robbers going to get away with stealing the bank’s money? Had the clerk’s feeble attempt at wit antagonized the gunman? What was going on outside the bank? Who screamed? Had a runaway bullet struck Susanna or her elderly companion?

  Obviously I wasn’t fated to know today. I might as well turn the television off and check on the stew.

  Sky gave a little ‘remember me’ whimper.”

  “Come on out,” I said, but she refused to leave her haven under the table. Halley and Misty followed me into the kitchen, tails wagging.

  The stew smelled… Like it was burning!

  I grabbed the tall spoon and scraped chunks of beef from the bottom of the Dutch oven, then added water. Saved. Just in time.

  But hadn’t I just turned it on? Quickly I checked the temperature. Medium heat.

  Next to the controls, the stove clock told me what had gone wrong. Forty-five minutes had passed while Sky hid from the storm and I lost myself in the movie.

  But how was that possible? Not that much had happened in the story. A glimpse of Susanna and her silver-haired companion on Main Street, the scene in the bank…

  I shouldn’t be surprised. It had happened before. I had quite literally lost myself in the strange movie that came and went at will. In other words, under the spell of the old Western, I’d lost track of time.

  It was as good an explanation as any.

  Thirty-two

  After the storm moved out of the Foxglove Corners, I turned on the haunted television set again—in the middle of breaking news about flood alerts. The movie was as lost as I was.

  Suddenly I was impatient with the entire mystery. Absolutely fed up. I was minutes away from taking the set apart. That’s what I told myself, but, in the end, I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it. I’d find another way. Later. No, soon because I was tired of being taunted and held captive by demented electronics.

  The stew was done. Crane and Julia would be home any minute, once again too late to see the movie. I was lucky they believed me. Most people would think I was delusional.

  “Let’s go outside, girls,” I said.

  Sky ventured out from under the table and trailed after the rest of the pack with Raven. Raven’s walking was better, but she showed no interest in her doghouse, which was good. She was never going to live outside again.

  While the dogs padded around in the wet grass, I admired the yellow Victorian across the lane. Camille and Gilbert had decorated the wraparound porch with pumpkins and tiny orange fairy lights that looked like glittering stars.

  Halloween was two weeks away. We should do something similar, perhaps attach pumpkins as heads to our scarecrows. Yes, that would work, and whil
e I was at it, I’d set myself a goal: solve the mystery of the rogue TV by the end of October.

  Misty found a red ball buried in a fall of soggy leaves. She brought it to me, eyes bright and tail wagging.

  “Let’s play in the house,” I said, taking the muddy ball reluctantly, and called the dogs to heel.

  Back inside, I turned on the TV again, this time to a cooking show. Sheets of Halloween cookies waited to be frosted. A cook in a witch costume was turning cats and pumpkins from plain to fantastic with black and orange sprinkles.

  Baking cookies was something else I could do.

  Waiting led to thinking, not particularly about Halloween treats and seasonal decorations. I turned the TV off and wondered what determined its slip into the familiar pattern. Was there a common denominator other than the fact that I was always alone when the movie started playing? Which in itself was vaguely suspicious.

  The answer came so quickly that it must have been on the edge of my awareness all along.

  Rain.

  It had been raining every time the movie aired.

  Every time?

  I leaned back in the rocker and thought about that.

  Yes, every time. All the way back to the day when I’d first seen the antique television set at the estate sale. It had rained just before we’d arrived. I remembered clearly. Miss Eidt had been afraid the weather would spoil our day. We had both worn raincoats. She’d added a pretty paisley scarf. When I led Bronwyn out to the car, her fur was damp.

  Not just rain, though. Stormy weather with lightning flashes and thunder crashes.

  Every time.

  I smiled, feeling proud of myself. Except, why hadn’t I realized it sooner? The sky darkened, the rain came, lightning crackled in the sky. On the small screen the movie played, only to stop in mid-scene.

  What could the connection be?

  Because there had to be one. I felt as if I’d made a huge, unanticipated breakthrough.

  Fine, but where would it lead me?

  One problem remained. Thunder and lightning didn’t explain the eerie way the movie restarted exactly where it had been cut off, even though days separated the two airings.