The Dreadful Revenge of Ernest Gallen

by James Lincoln Collier

  Grampa shrugged. “Gene, people can get themselves to believe whatever they want to believe. I can only guess, but I suppose way down inside where he didn’t have to notice it, he must have known there was something suspicious about it. But he didn’t have to believe that. Gallen said he had an expert’s opinion that there was oil there. Your dad had no particular reason to disbelieve that, and so he didn’t.” Grampa shrugged again. “But I’m only guessing about that, Gene.”

  “Do you think it was wrong for him to run away?”

  He didn’t say anything for a minute. Then he said, “He must have known that he was finished in Magnolia. He’d never be able to have a life here. Wouldn’t be able to find a job, wouldn’t have any friends. He’d have been ostracized. You and your mom, too. And of course he knew there was a chance he could have gotten what poor Gallen got. So he left.”

  “Why didn’t he take us with him?”

  Grampa shrugged. “You’ll have to ask your mom about that.”

  Then the front door opened, and Mom came in. “You two look mighty serious,” she said. “What have you been talking about?”

  “Oh, various things,” Grampa said. “How was your meeting?”

  “Boring as usual. Old Mrs. Saunders never knows when to shut up.” She looked at me. “Gene, just before I went out somebody phoned you.”

  “Who? Sam?”

  “No, it wasn’t. It was some man. I asked him who it was, but he wouldn’t tell me. It seemed a little strange to me.”

  “It was my dad.”

  “Now, Gene,” she said. She gave me a little smile. “It was not your dad. Probably somebody looking for a boy to do some work and heard of you.”

  I was sure of it. “It was my dad.”

  “Gene,” Grampa said. “I know your dad has been on your mind a good deal lately. No doubt because of the matters we’ve just been talking about. That’s understandable. But you have to be realistic. After all this time it’s very unlikely that your dad would try to get in touch with you.”

  “It was my dad. I know it.”

  “How can you be so sure, Gene?” Mom said.

  “I’m sure. Did it sound like my dad, Mom?”

  “I haven’t heard him speak for years, Gene. I hardly remember. Now really, you have to get over this idea.”

  “But he sounded like my dad.”

  “Gene, many people sound the same on the telephone. You can’t go by that. You’ve got to let it go. It’s very unlikely we’ll ever hear anything from him again.”

  “I suggest we drop all of this for one evening,” Grampa said. “I want to see if I can get any news about the Social Security bill.”

  But I knew it was my dad. Maybe he’d call again if I asked him.

  Chapter 11

  I was scared of playing baseball—scared of holding a baseball bat in my hands. I didn’t really see how the specter could make me kill Grampa, but I was afraid that he could. I felt confused, not really able to think clearly about anything, and I wondered if the specter was causing that, too.

  He caught me the next afternoon after school.

  “Can’t you leave me alone for a little while? I’m just sick of all of this.”

  “I’m sorry, Gene. It’ll be over soon. We’re going to do it very soon. Sooner than you think.”

  “No. I’m not going to do it. Ever.”

  “Yes, Gene. Yes you are. Very soon.”

  “No. Go away. No, never.”

  “I’ll go away when it’s done, Gene. I’ll go away when your grampa is sprawled on the floor with a crack in his skull.”

  “No,” I shouted. “No, no, no. You can’t make me.”

  “Yes, I can, Gene. And I will.” And it was gone.

  I felt weak and scared, for the voice was coming for me, and I didn’t know if I could fight it off. When would it come? Soon, it said. Today? Tomorrow? The next day? No longer than that. Could I fight it off? I didn’t know.

  I felt too scared to go to Snuffy’s, so I went on home. Mom was in the kitchen ironing one of Grampa’s shirts. “Where’s Grampa?” I asked.

  “He went over to the Chronicle office to see Mr. Samuels. He had to talk to him about something.”

  “Did that guy say he’d phone me again?”

  “No,” Mom said. She looked at me. “Gene, you have to forget about your dad. When you’re a grown-up you’ll be free to do what you want about him. I won’t be able to stop you.”

  “Do you think I’ll be able to find him then?”

  “Often you can in these cases. There are people who make a business of tracing lost persons. It’s expensive, but often they can find the person.”

  “Why don’t you want to see him, Mom?”

  “I just don’t, is all,” she said firmly. “I think we’re better off as we are, Gene. Someday you’ll understand. I hope you will, anyway. Now, let’s drop the subject.”

  I went upstairs to my room, but instead of doing my homework like I should have, I sat on my bed with my hands over my face. “Dad,” I whispered. “I need you. I need you now, right away. The specter is after me. It’s going to make me do something terrible. Please, Dad. I need you. Please call me again. I’m sorry I wasn’t home before. I’m home now. I’ll wait. Please call.”

  I sat on the bed and waited. Nothing happened. I waited some more. Still nothing, so I went to my table, took out my math book, and began working on some problems—tried to, anyway, but I didn’t have much heart for it.

  Fifteen minutes later I heard the phone ring downstairs. I jumped up, ran out of the room, and clattered downstairs. Grampa was on the phone by the living room table. “Right,” he said. “Sure. Thanks. Good-bye.”

  “That wasn’t my dad, was it?”

  “No. It was Mr. Samuels. As you can imagine, we’ve been talking. You kids have raised a lot of problems we’re trying to head off.”

  “Grampa, if my dad called, would you let me talk to him?”

  “Yes. I would. I don’t think your mom would.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She went over to Mrs. Saunders’ to discuss the church supper. She said she wouldn’t be gone long.”

  “Grampa, why won’t Mom tell me about my dad?”

  He gazed at me for a while, and then he went back to his easy chair by the window and sat down. “She’s stubborn. Your dad let her down, and she hasn’t found it easy to forgive him.” He thought for a minute. “Gene, you’re not doing yourself any good by brooding over this. You need to forget about him.”

  “Mom said that when I grew up I might be able to find him.”

  He nodded. “It’s quite possible. You never know about these things.”

  “Will you tell me what he was like?”

  He thought some more. “It might take some of the mystery out of it for you to know. Don’t tell your mom. This will have to be between you and me.”

  “Yes. I understand.”

  He nodded again. “He was a decent enough fellow, Gene. That much I can say for him. He came out of St. Louis to work as assistant manager at the Magnolia Hotel when new owners came in. They brought him out. Had big plans for him. He was young, good-looking, had good manners, a nice way of talking. Gift of gab, as they say. He was well liked around town. Your mom fell for him. A lot of the girls around here did. Your mom was good-looking, too—still is, if I say so myself, although she’s my daughter. She was popular, and they hit it off, the two of them.

  “To be honest, Gene, I had my doubts about him from the start. He struck me as a good hearted fellow, but weak. More interested in having a good time than in getting on with the job—liked to have a laugh, a drink with the fellows. But your mom was smitten, and I knew if I tried to stand in her way she’d marry him anyway. So they got married, and a year or so later you came along. Not long after that your dad lost his job at the Magnolia Hotel. I never quite knew the truth of it. The accounts were a muddle, and a good deal of money was missing. I don’t believe your dad took the money. He wasn’t dis
honest. It was more likely that he was living a little too high on the hotel’s money—taking people to dinner, giving them tickets to Broadway shows when they came through St. Louis, that sort of thing. He saw it as good publicity for the hotel, I’m sure, but I’ve also no doubt that he substantially overdid it, without really meaning to. You know how it is. In the weakness of the moment he’d pick up the dinner check for a party of people and charge it to the hotel. Wanted to look like a big shot, I suppose.

  “Well, it doesn’t matter now. But of course rumors went around, and people were leery of hiring him. So he set himself up in the used car business. I lent him some money to get started with. I had money in those days. It wasn’t much—a few thousand dollars. I figured I’d never see it again, but I liked Tom, despite everything. He was a likable sort. And, after all, he was my daughter’s husband. And the father of my grandchild.

  “Around this time Gallen came out from Chicago. Gallen was a crook, but he was smart enough. He saw that your dad was just the front man he wanted. Personable, a little casual about money. He hired him to front for the operation. Popular fellow around town, just what Gallen wanted as the public face of the business.”

  “Probably he didn’t know all the details of it,” I said.

  Grampa shrugged. “He wasn’t a dishonest man, just weak. The scheme sounded plausible, and he didn’t bother to look at it too closely.” He pursed his lips. “Then of course the whole thing blew up and he ran.”

  “What did Mom do then?”

  “She was bitter about it, naturally. He’d badly let her down. Let us all down, for that matter.”

  I remembered what Sonny had said about his mom crying at night in bed. “Did she cry?”

  “Not when I saw her. But I imagine she did when I wasn’t around.”

  “Did I cry, Grampa?”

  “You were only a couple of years old, remember. You didn’t understand it. At first you kept asking, ‘Where’s Daddy?’ Your mom would tell you that he wouldn’t be home for a while. Then you began asking if your dad was dead. We’d say no, but he’d had to go away, and wouldn’t be back soon. And after a while you stopped asking.”

  “We never heard anything from him?”

  “Actually, we did. After he’d been gone a month or so we began getting letters. Not often, but now and again. He wanted to explain, say how sorry he was, begged us to forgive him. He said he hoped someday something could be arranged so he could get to see us. You, especially—he said he couldn’t bear the idea of not seeing his son again. Your mom wouldn’t answer his letters. He didn’t give an address, of course, but there was a go-between who could have passed letters along. When he realized she wasn’t going to answer he phoned a couple of times. Your mom wouldn’t speak to him. I talked to him. He begged me to persuade your mom to forgive him. She wouldn’t. He wanted to talk to you, although you were only beginning to talk. She wouldn’t let you. After about six months the letters and the phone calls stopped.”

  “I wish Mom had let me talk to him.”

  Grampa shrugged. “It wouldn’t matter now, Gene. You wouldn’t remember.”

  Then Mom came home and we dropped the subject.

  The next morning I felt a whole lot better. Didn’t know why I felt so much better, but wasn’t going to question it. What was the point in worrying about that voice all the time? When you got down to it, the specter was right in a way: he’d gotten a rough deal out of the thing. Sure, he’d been swindling people, there wasn’t any question about that. But like Grampa said, they’d brought it on themselves because they were willing to believe whatever they wanted to believe. Allowed themselves to get swindled, you could say. I could see where the specter had a point. Grampa would be the first to say that there were always two sides to a question.

  I was feeling a little more like swinging a baseball bat again, so after school Sonny and I rounded up about ten kids and we went over to the field where we played. Five to a side—pitcher, shortstop, first baseman, and two outfielders to each team. No leading off, no stealing. It was nice. Took my mind off all that other stuff. Why was it my business to worry about Grampa, anyway? Let him look out for himself. I liked swinging a baseball bat. I got a double and a triple, made a couple of nice stops. By five o’clock, when the kids had to start home for supper, I was feeling pretty good. I picked up my bat and slung my glove over the butt end.

  Sonny gave me a look. “You taking your bat home, or what, Yewgene?”

  I laughed. “It’s okay, Sonny. I need to put new tape on the handle. I’m not going to slug anyone with it.”

  “Maybe I better take it, Gene. Just in case.”

  “Nah. Don’t worry. Nothing’s going to happen.” I was feeling happy.

  “You sure?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’m sure.”

  “Well, okay.” But he looked doubtful.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m okay.” I headed on home, letting the breeze dry the sweat from my forehead, feeling pretty good. As I walked along I remembered the feeling I’d got when I’d hit the triple a half hour before, the sharp click and the solid feel in my hands. I took the bat off my shoulder and swung it a couple of times. I had a nice groove. If you hit somebody with a swing like that they probably wouldn’t feel a thing. They’d be dead before they knew anything about it. Snap, just like that. Grampa most likely wouldn’t feel anything at all. One second there, the next second gone.

  So I walked on, feeling pretty cheerful and comfortable. It was nice to feel good for a change, after everything I’d gone through. In fact, I felt sort of outside myself, somewhere above my head, maybe, kind of looking down and watching myself walking along taking practice swings with the bat. Somehow, I was in both places—down there, swinging the bat, and above myself, watching. A funny situation, but kind of nice. I chuckled a little about it.

  Pretty soon I saw our house ahead. Grampa’s car was not parked out front, which probably meant that Mom had gone off with it somewhere. She drove it more than Grampa did, as far as that went. Shopping, maybe. Or at some meeting.

  Where was Grampa? He could be in his usual chair by the front window, could be talking on the telephone, could be doing some cleaning to help Mom out. He could be anywhere. So instead of coming in the front door as usual, I slipped along the side of the house, ducking down when I went past the windows.

  When I got to the back of the house I took a quick peek through the kitchen window. Grampa wasn’t in the kitchen mopping or sweeping. I slipped a little farther to the back door and eased it open a crack. Some music came drifting out. That probably meant that Grampa was listening to some symphony on the radio. That was good: the music would keep him from hearing anyone creeping into the house.

  I was still hanging in the air watching myself. It was fun to be two places at once, and I chuckled again. It wasn’t likely that Grampa could hear the chuckle over the music.

  Grampa’s chair was always half turned away from the front window, so he could get good light for reading but look out the window, too. The best thing would be to slip into the kitchen, and on down the little hall to the living room. He’d be half turned away from me—might not notice me come in, especially if he were concentrating on the music. If he did notice me, he wouldn’t think anything of it, anyway, if I walked around in back of him. Afterwards I’d take the money out of his wallet, take some of Mom’s jewelry from the box on her dresser. It wouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes, I figured.

  But I knew I’d better get a look at Grampa to know exactly where he was sitting, which way he was facing, so I’d be able to come up behind him without him noticing. Of course it wouldn’t really matter if he saw me come in with my baseball bat and glove—he wouldn’t think anything of that. Maybe he would start a little conversation about how the Cardinals did yesterday. Last conversation for Grampa. And I’d answer something and casually walk around behind him.

  Still, it would be better to know exactly where he was. So I slipped along the back of
the house, keeping my head below the windows, until I’d reached the side window of the living room. I rose a little and took a quick look in. Grampa was sitting with his back to the front windows so as to catch the light, reading the newspaper. It gave me a kind of funny feeling to see him sitting there, the same old Grampa I’d known all my life, who’d taken us in when hard times came, who’d looked after me, taken me to baseball games and such. Kind of hard on him to have something like this happen to him.

  Then I reminded myself that he deserved it. I slipped back around the house the way I’d come to the kitchen door. I eased the door open and started to slip forward. Then somebody jerked me from behind and pulled me backwards off the kitchen steps. I went down hard on my back. The bat was snatched out of my hand.

  Chapter 12

  Sonny was kneeling on my chest, the bat raised over my head. “Yewgene, if you don’t lay still I’m gonna bust you with the bat.”

  I lay there feeling dazed and bewildered. I was breathing hard, trembling, and felt weak and sweaty. I remembered well enough what I’d been doing, remembered taking swings with the bat, peeking in at the kitchen door, being outside myself—remembered it all. Yet it didn’t seem possible that it was me who had done all that. How could it have been? How had it all happened? Had I become somebody else? I took a deep breath and shook myself all over.

  Sonny was staring down at me. “How you feeling, Gene?”

  “I feel terrible. Awful.”

  “I reckoned you might.”

  I looked into myself for a minute. “I think I’m okay now, Sonny. You can let me up.”

  He was wary and went on looking at me. “I don’t know if I believe you anymore, Gene. You sure you ain’t still got the specter in you?”

  “Yes. I’m okay. I’m over it.”

  He went on holding the bat over me. “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.” Sonny got up off me, but he stood only a couple of feet away, holding the bat. I knelt up and wiped the sweat off my face with my sleeve. “What made you come along, Sonny?”