Tales for a Stormy Night: Fifteen Crime Stories

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  The usual Saturday night crowd had congregated along the main street, the men half-sitting on car fenders, waiting for their wives to finish shopping or the kids to get out of an early show. Jeb knew them all. He waved and said a word here and there. Outside Robbins’ music store he stopped at the window. He had not seen Ellen for a week. She was showing a man and his two sons all the harmonicas in the place. As he watched her, Jeb’s quarrel with Tinton fell away. There seemed to be an aura of goodness and happiness about her. A wisp of hair had strayed out of her braid. She kept brushing it away as she might a fly while she talked. By the time she noticed him, Jeb was pantomiming a hot harmonica player. Her eyes laughed at him. He went in, but Ellen did not leave her customers, not even for a moment to say a word to him. He was being over-sensitive, he told himself—hot and cold, like a kid with puppy love. He forced himself to watch her until she looked at him again. He winked. She came to him then.

  “Silly Jeb. Where were you all evening?”

  “Examining my conscience. Thinking of you.”

  “In that order?”

  He nodded. “I still don’t understand why you won’t marry me.”

  “Sometimes I don’t either,” she said. There was a blast of sound from the counter. “Please boys, not unless you want to buy that one.” She turned back to him. “Jeb, will you do me a favor? Mrs. Robbins bought some more relics. They’re in back. Would you dust and put them in the case for me?”

  As he walked to the rear of the store, he noticed other customers in the record booths. Ballet music and blues blended into each other as he passed. He was proud of the store. It was largely his idea. For years, Mrs. Robbins kept it as a curiosity shop to attract the tourists who came to Tinton because it was so “quaint.” The relics, he found, were a mandolin without strings, a fife, and an ancient horn. All of them were clogged with dust, and the horn was tarnished black. He rummaged through a cupboard and found rags and silver polish. He was depressed again. Ellen was casual, and he had needed something strong, something warm. She came to the back room a few minutes later.

  “I’ll close up soon. How are you coming, Jeb?”

  “Almost done. Where’d she get these things?” he asked, but not really caring.

  “The Rutherford place. I’m afraid Miss Hannah is hard up. That fife’s supposed to have been used in the Revolution.”

  “It looks it,” he said.

  “You’re an angel, Jeb.” She brushed his cheek with her lips as she left him to return to her customers. And for some reason that hurt him even more than her indifference. “Be a good boy,” everyone seemed to say. He had to shake off this pettiness. He returned to work and tried to distract himself by thinking of the Rutherford place. It was the oldest house in Tinton. In fact, it had all but survived the family, for in his time there was only Hannah left. She was older than his father and unmarried. Perhaps when all the old families died out Tinton would change. He, himself, was the last of six generations in the town, and still not married at twenty-seven. There might be a reason beyond random for that. Surely something more than fancy held him waiting for Ellen all these years, and her from marrying him. He felt now that they would never marry.

  The blackened horn was taking color in his hands, a deep gold that glowed like a core of fire. Indeed, it seemed very warm to his touch as though it were a thing he was tempering instead of cleaning. It was a simple instrument, not quite as long as his arm, and wonderfully fragile-looking. He pushed the rag gently through the bell end, and taking a coat-hanger and bending it, he worked the cloth up to the mouth, cleaning away, perhaps, the dust of centuries. When he had finished he spread a cloth on the table and laid the horn on it. Its simple beauty enchanted him. He was impelled to touch it, to run his fingers over its warm smoothness, around the notches which must have guided its tonal range. While he carried the fife and mandolin to the front of the store and made room in the case for them he felt an urgency to return to the horn.

  “I’ll be a few minutes more, Jeb,” Ellen said.

  He scarcely heard her. As he leaned down to lift the backboard of the case, he imagined he saw the horn glowing in the semi-darkness. He could close his eyes and see it, as one sees the sun long after having looked at it. Beside it again, he lost all sense of time and place, even of Ellen. He picked it up tenderly, with the feeling coming over him that he could take from it the music of heaven and earth, the stars, the sea, the grass, the birds, yesterday, tomorrow.

  He moistened his lips and put them to the mouth of the horn. Against his lips the pressure was sweet and natural, as a kiss might be, and all the while the golden beauty of it enthralled him. He held it loosely for fear of injuring it, and then finally, like an impatient lover, he breathed into it his wish to give it life. The sound was no more than a whispered moan, the wind perhaps on a hushed night. But he could hear it still when he took the horn from his lips. Time being nothing to him, Ellen was beside him instantly.

  “What are you doing, Jeb? That sound would raise the dead.”

  He showed her the horn but she saw nothing wondrous about it.

  “You look flushed, Jeb. Do you feel well?”

  “I’m all right,” he said, running his fingers protectively over the horn. He was glad she had not commented on it, even on its beauty.

  “If you must play that thing, please take it outside. I should be through soon. I think it’s very inconsiderate of Mrs. Wells to buy records at this hour. She has all week…Really, Jeb. You don’t look well.”

  He turned from her, the color driven higher in his face with anger at her words, “that thing.” “I’m all right, I tell you.”

  “All right, Jeb. I must go back,” she said quietly. “I’m near the end of my patience too.”

  He waited until he was sure that she had left the room before he moved. Then he unbolted the back door and went out, carrying the horn beneath his coat.

  The closing of the door behind him released Jeb from every tie that had ever held him. In the moment or two that he stood in the shadows of the building, he seemed to see the climaxes of his life turning like reflections in the facets of a diamond, and then the reflections were gone, and only the crystal deepness of the unmarked facets passed before him, filling him with the urge to touch each one with his personality, his power. The sweet, buoyant air seemed part of him. He felt that he could bring a blessed warmth to wastelands, a coolness to the desert…this by nothing more than impulse. And all the while, the horn was warm next to his breast and becoming more and more a part of him.

  He drew it out and looked at it, a thin line of fire in the darkness. He lifted it to his lips and once more breathed into it. The sound now was like a lonesome bird call. He paused and heard a rustle, as of animals stirring in the night. Again he touched the horn to his lips, this time covering a notch with his finger, changing the pitch. Presently he alternated the two notes. When he stopped to listen, the sound of rustling heightened. For a moment he thought the sea had climbed beyond its walls and driven in upon the town. He moved away from the building and the rustling followed him. As he went he heard his name called into the night at first behind him, and then to the left of him, and then to the right, starting as a familiar voice, and growing with each repetition more strange, more distant. He walked through the side streets stealthily, with catlike swiftness, and the rustling followed him, heightening all the while, and seeming at times to sweep above and past him. He could even feel it wafting about him the way the wind might, although not a leaf was stirring among the trees he passed.

  At the edge of town he paused and sounded the golden horn more boldly, swelling the tones until they were true and strong. He played his fingers down the tonal openings, exciting a soft, rich trill of music. The rustling intensified. He was in the center of a whirlwind. He pushed through it, fashioning the rhythm of the music to the step he took along the road. Presently he was half-stepping, half-skipping, and the rustling took on his rhythm. Somewhere ahead of him two round lights came out
of the darkness like two strange moons traveling side by side. Almost upon him, they turned with fierce abruptness and were gone. He took the horn from his lips. The light of the true moon was everywhere, and among the rustling sounds came the burble of the frogs, the frenzied scolding of birds disturbed in their nests, and the chatter of scurrying animals. Jeb laughed aloud, and the hills picked up his laughter, and swung it back into the fury of sounds about him. Again he played. He did not pause until he came to the edge of Hank’s woods. There the fog still lay like spun linen and he felt that he might bounce upon it as a child bounces on a bed. It was a passing fancy, but it drew him from the road along the edge of the woods, where, as he went the birds awakened and followed him, joining their song with his. He sat down on a stump and rested. The birds carried along the melody, a translucent sort of music: little bells, reeds, the long thin tremolo of hair-like strings. In his hand the horn was vivid gold, giving a light that was reflected in the eyes of the little forest animals watching him. He realized the rustling sound was gone. He laid the horn across his lap and put his hand upon it, its velvety warmth answering his tenderness. His breathing quickened and the smell of earth came to him and a mustiness that was almost sweatlike. The rustling sounds were returning, at first quietly on one side of him and then surrounding him. He stood up and climbed onto the stump to breathe above the stifling air near the ground. The rustling swept away in front of him toward the meadow. The horn in his hand seemed to quicken to the movement of his fingers on it, and he drew his other hand affectionately about it as though he were alone for a moment with his beloved, suffering an exquisite anticipation.

  The music when he once more tilted the horn into the night had a quiet sadness that soon grew into melancholy. It was a lament that might have been winded over the last fires of a dead hero’s camp. The birds grew still. In the meadow the fog seemed to break, wisping upward in a hundred little pyramids, the slow movement of them suggesting prayer or mourning, and in the midst of them a larger core of whiteness writhed and vibrated. The shadows deepened as the moon passed further over the forest. Jeb played on, the melancholy in him growing deeper. Then the first fears of parting with the horn came to him when he saw a searchlight sweep the sky and was reminded of the dawn. His heart cried out against it, and his whole body shivered with the motion of the core of whiteness in the field. But, as becomes a lover who is still with his beloved, however immanent departure, he was moved to gayety.

  The music changed, his fingers flying over the pitchkeys, provoking laughter in the throat of the horn. To this the birds responded, and soon the whole forest was merry. Even the frogs quickened their tympany. In the field the pyramids of mist were dissolving and gradually shaping into white swirls, churning, as if whirled about by many dancers. Inside himself, Jeb felt the growing of some struggle. It was his adolescence again, or more than that, it was a lifetime of adolescence, urging a definition or a freedom—a merging with the music. The field was vibrant. His mouth was burning with the heat of the horn against it, his whole body on fire with the wild white heat.

  A sudden stillness came upon the creatures of the forest. Jeb was aware of it although he played on, feeling the climax of his music almost upon him, and feeling as he played that he must be stronger than some force that would try to stop him. Whatever was happening in the field was happening to him, and there was a logic to it, in the ways of his logic that night. There was a presence there, and it was a part of him and his beloved horn. The birds flew out of the trees and about him, almost touching him with their wings, and still he played. There was stirring somewhere behind him, as of the wind starting up suddenly among the leaves, and then came a rattle. It grew louder until he recognized it. The sound was the clanging of chains.

  For a moment he stopped, but the horn clung to his lips, and while he listened to the clanging, almost upon him now, the horn grew cold to his touch, but clung still to his lips now like frosty metal in the winter. A terrible fear came on him. The birds were gone, and no small curious eyes stared up at him. In the field, the mist had taken the shapes of a hundred sheep tumbling out of the meadow, moving away from him faster and faster. Watching them go, he felt a great surge of anger that drove the clanging noise from his ears. He stiffened every muscle in his body and forced himself to the greatest height he could reach. He strained his head upward and tightened his grip on the horn until it was cutting into his flesh. Then, poising the dying instrument high above him, he poured the full breath of his lungs into it, and through it—a great long cry that tore through the night like the anguish of the betrayed.

  As he sounded the horn a second time he turned and emptied its last fierce tones into the woods, into the face of whatever evil crept upon him there. The chains were silent. His arms fell to his sides, and he heard a tinkling sound as the horn fell from his hand upon the stump. The swishing noise came upon him again, and he thought somehow of taffeta and buckskin trousers. With it came the musty smell of sweat and earth again. Something brushed him to the ground. His legs were too weak to hold him. He fell forward on his face, the ground sweet and steady beneath him. He rolled over, and for a moment saw the mists sweep into the woods above him. Then he slept.

  When Jeb awoke the glisten of dawn was all about him. He knew where he was presently, but it seemed that he had come there a long time before. There was a lightness in his head as though he were coming out of ether. From somewhere near him he heard the plaintive lowing of a cow. He stood up and listened for the lowing again, and then followed it through the long, wet grass. “C’boss, c’boss,” he called softly. The forlorn answer came to him, and after it, the weak bleating of a newborn calf. He found them in the shelter of a grove of trees that separated his land from Hank Trilling’s, the cow licking her baby and trying to nudge it closer to the warmth of her body. Jeb took off his coat and wrapped it around the calf. He picked it up and carried it home, its weary mother following after them.

  In the barn he scattered fresh straw and threw a blanket over the cow. He prepared a hot mash which he was feeding her when his father came in. The old man watched a few moments without speaking. The calf had found its mother’s milk.

  “Come early, didn’t she?” the old man said.

  “Some.”

  “Where’d you find her?”

  “Near Hank’s woods,” Jeb said.

  His father was thoughtful for a moment. “I wonder if something could have frightened her?”

  “Maybe,” Jeb said.

  “You ought to have changed your clothes before you went out to look for her, Jeb.” He said no more and was gone about his chores when Jeb looked up.

  The two men arrived early for church services that morning as was their custom. Jeb was weary, but he felt a contentment that he had not known before. The night was no more than a dream to him, and Ellen was waiting at the church gate, as lovely as the spring itself. He got out of the truck and let his father park it.

  “Are you all right, Jeb?” she asked, reaching out her hand to him.

  “Yes.”

  She clung to his hand a moment. “Will you ask me again now to marry you?”

  “I will, and I do ask you, Ellen. Will you marry me?”

  “Yes, Jeb. Last night when you left me, and when I called and you didn’t answer, I thought that I had lost you, and I knew then that if I had, I had lost my life.”

  He smiled at her and tightened her hand between his arm and his side, but he didn’t speak. Near them a group of townsmen were talking.

  “…I tell you as sure as I’m standing here,” one of them said, “there was a tornado last night. I saw the spiral on the road when I was going in town. I pulled off the road just ahead of it and the motor died. I jumped out of the car and lay in the ditch, and I heard the wind in it screeching and howling.”

  “You dreamt it,” somebody said. “You didn’t hear of any damage this morning, did you?”

  Ellen’s hand was pressing into Jeb’s arm as they listened.

 
Hank Trilling took off his hat and scratched his head. “Well, there was something queer going on last night. The dog kept barking, and I’d go to the door and listen. The birds were singing all night long.”

  Nathan Wilkinson was standing among them. He noticed Jeb and excused himself. “Jeb,” he started, having tipped his hat to Ellen, “I’m afraid I was premature in my proposition to you last night. There’s a peculiar revolt in the Board of Elders. I’d find it a bit awkward if they refused to confirm…Well, you see my position?”

  “Yes, sir,” Jeb said. “I appreciate your confidence in me anyway.” Then he added with the same blandness: “Perhaps when I’ve proven myself worthy of the honor, you will propose me?”

  “Of course, my boy. Of course I shall.” He swept his hat off to Ellen.

  Jeb and Ellen walked on toward the church. Among the women on the steps was old Hannah Rutherford. She caught Ellen by the arm and led her and Jeb apart. “Those things I gave Mrs. Robbins, Ellen, was there a horn among them?”

  “Yes,” Ellen said, the word scarcely getting out of her throat.

  “I don’t believe in superstitions, Ellen, but I think she ought to put that away where no one could try to play it.”

  “Why?” Jeb asked. “Why should no one play it, Miss Hannah?”

  The old woman looked up at him. “Particularly you, young man. I remember your escapade with the chains. As I say, I put no store by it, but my grandfather found me with it in my hands once and he told me that a young man had brought it to the village in his grandfather’s time when music wasn’t allowed. They caught him playing the devil’s tune on it, with the whole of Tinton dancing like the damned. He was executed as a witch, and he cursed them horribly. He wished them no rest until the chains were gone from Tinton. It’s an old wives’ tale, but I’d put the horn away just the same.”

  “Ellen, wait here for me,” Jeb whispered.

  He went into the church and up through the choir loft. He pulled the ladder from under the dusty pews stored there and tilted it to the trap door of the belfry. There was nothing but the church bell, which began to toll the service then. The floor was thick with dust except where lately something had been moved from it. But there were no footprints, and the chains were gone.