by Peter Straub
The two men got out of the car, pulling their coats in tightly around their necks. Scales, now flanked by two shivering children, did not move from the porch. He had the high hard look of excitement which accompanied his most passionate litigations. His reedy voice called to them. “’Bout time you two lawyers got here. Walt Hardesty’s been here ten minutes.”
“He didn’t have as far to come,” Sears grumbled. The brim of his hat curled in the unobstructed breeze cutting across the fields.
“Sears James, I don’t suppose any man alive ever got in the last word with you. Hey, you kids! Get back in the house, you’ll freeze your butts off.” He swatted one with each hand, and the two boys scuttled back inside the door. Scales stood above the two old men, smiling grimly.
“What is it, Elmer?” Ricky asked, holding his coat closed at his neck. His feet in his well-shined black shoes were already chilled.
“You’ll just have to see. You two town boys aren’t really dressed for a walk across the fields. Guess that’s your hard luck. Hang on a second, I’ll get Hardesty.” He disappeared for a moment into the house and emerged again with the sheriff, Walt Hardesty, who was wearing a loose sheepskin-lined denim coat and a Stetson. Alerted by Scales’s remark, Ricky looked at the sheriff’s feet: he wore heavy leather hiking boots. “Mr. James, Mr. Hawthorne.” He nodded to them, steam pluming out over his mustache, which was larger and more ragged than Ricky’s. In this cattleman’s outfit, Hardesty looked fifteen years younger than his true age. “Now that you’re here, maybe Elmer will show us what this mystery’s all about.”
“Damn right I will,” said the farmer, and clumped down the porch steps and began leading them away from the house, walking on the path toward the snow-dusted barn. “Just you come this way, gentlemen, and see what I’m gonna show you.”
Hardesty fell in beside Ricky. Sears was walking alone, with immense dignity, behind them. “Colder ‘n a bitch,” the sheriff said. “Looks like being a damn long winter.”
Ricky said, “I hope not. I’m too old for one of those.”
With exaggerated gestures and an expression like glee on his skinny face, Elmer Scales was unhooking a long rail fence which led into a side pasture. “Now you pay attention, Walt,” he called back. “You see if you can spot any tracks.” He pointed to a line of splayed footprints. “Them’s mine from this morning, goin’ and comin’.” The prints returning were widely spaced, as if Scales had been running. “Where’s your notebook? Ain’t you gonna take notes?”
“Calm down, Elmer,” the sheriff said. “I want to see what the problem is first.”
“You took notes fast enough when my oldest boy racked up his car.”
“Come on, Elmer. Show us what you want us to see.”
“You town boys gonna ruin your shoes,” Elmer said. “Can’t be helped. Follow me.”
Hardesty did as commanded and set off beside Elmer; his broad back in the bulky coat made the farmer look like a capering boy. Ricky glanced back at Sears, just now approaching the gate and regarding the snowy field with disgust. “He might have told us we’d need snowshoes.”
“He’s enjoying himself,” Ricky said wonderingly.
“He’ll enjoy himself when I get walking pneumonia and fire a lawsuit at him,” Sears muttered. “Since there’s no alternative, let’s go.”
Gamely Sears put a well-shod foot down into the pasture, where it immediately sank into snow up to the laces. “Ugh.” He retracted it; shook it. The others were already halfway across the field. “I’m not going,” Sears said, jamming his hands into the pockets of his opulent coat. “Damn it, he can come to the office.”
Ricky said, “Well then, I’d better go at least,” and started after the other two. Walt Hardesty had turned around to look at them, stroking his ragged mustache, a frontier lawman translated to a snowy field in New York state. He appeared to be smiling. Elmer Scales plodded on oblivious. Ricky picked his way from one footprint to another. Behind him, he heard Sears emit enough air to fill a balloon and begin to follow.
Single file now, Elmer talking and gesticulating in front, they went across the field. With an odd air of triumphant glee, Elmer stopped at the top of a ridge. Beside him, half-covered by snow, were piles of dirty washing. When Hardesty reached the low gray piles, he knelt and prodded; then he grunted, pushing, and Ricky saw four neat black feet roll stiffly into the air.
His shoes soaked and his feet wet, Ricky came up to them. Sears, holding his arms out for balance, was still threading toward them, his hat brim flattened by the wind.
“I didn’t know you still kept any sheep,” he heard Hardesty say.
“I don’t, now!” Scales yelled. “I just had those four, and now they’re all gone. Somebody killed ’em. Just kept ’em around for the sake of the old days. My daddy had a couple hundred, but there’s no money in the stupid dang things anymore. The kids liked ’em, that’s all.”
Ricky looked down at the four dead animals: flat on their sides, eyes glazed, snow in the matted wool. Innocent, he asked, “What killed them?”
“Yeah! That’s it, ain’t it!” Elmer was working himself up into a tantrum. “What! Well, you’re the law around here, you tell me!”
Hardesty, kneeling beside the dirty-gray body of the sheep he had rolled over, looked up at Scales with distaste. “You mean you don’t even know if these animals died naturally, Elmer?”
“I know! I know!” Scales lifted his arms dramatically: a bat in flight.
“How do you know?”
“Because nothing can kill a damn sheep, that’s how I know! And what the hell would kill four at once? Heart attacks? Boy!”
Sears now joined them, his frame making the kneeling Hardesty look small. “Four dead sheep,” he said, looking down. “I suppose you want to sue them.”
“What? You find the lunatic who did this and sue his ass off!”
“And who would that be?”
“Dunno. But . . .”
“Yeah?” Hardesty looked up again from the sheep huddled at his knees.
“I’ll tell you inside. Meantime, Mr. Sheriff, you look ’em over good and take notes and find out what he did to ’em.”
“He?”
“Inside.”
Hardesty, scowling, was probing the carcass. “You want the vet for this, Elmer, not me.” His hands moved to the animal’s neck. “Uh oh.”
“What?” said Scales, almost leaping with anticipation.
Instead of answering, Hardesty crab-walked to the next nearest sheep and thrust his hands deep into the wool at its neck.
“You might have seen this for yourself,” he said, and gripping its nose and mouth pulled back the sheep’s head.
“Jesus,” said Scales; the two lawyers were silent. Ricky looked down at the exposed wound: like a wide mouth, the long slash in the animal’s neck.
“A neat job,” Hardesty said. “A very neat job of work. Okay, Elmer. You proved your point. Let’s get back inside.” He wiped his fingers in the snow.
“Jesus,” Elmer repeated. “Their throats are cut? All of ’em?”
Wearily Hardesty yanked back the heads of each remaining animal. “All of them.”
Old voices spoke clearly in Ricky’s mind. He and Sears looked at each other, looked away.
“I’ll sue the heart out of whoever did this!” Elmer screeched. “Shit! I knew something was funny! I knew it! Shit!”
Hardesty was now looking around at the empty field. “You sure you went up here once, and then went straight back?”
“Uh huh.”
“How did you know something was wrong?”
“Because I saw ’em up here this morning from the window. Normally when I’m washin’ my face at my window them stupid animals is the first thing I see. See?” He pointed across the fields to his house. The shining pane of the kitchen window faced them. “There’ s
grass under here. They just walk around all day, stuffin’ themselves. When the snow gets real bad I pen ’em up in the barn. I just looked out an’ I saw ’em, like they are now. Something sure was wrong, so I put on my coat and my boots and came up. Then I called you and my lawyers. I want to sue, and I want you to arrest whoever done this.”
“There aren’t any tracks besides ours,” Hardesty said, smoothing his mustache.
“I know,” said Scales. “He brushed ’em out.”
“Could be. But you can usually tell, on unbroken snow.”
Jesus she moved she can’t she’s dead.
“And there’s another thing,” said Ricky, breaking into the suspicious silence which had developed between the two men and interrupting the lunatic voice in his mind. “There’s no blood.”
For a moment all four men stared down at the sheep and the fresh snow. It was true.
“Can we get off this steppe now?” Sears said.
Elmer was still staring down at the snow, swallowing. Sears began to move across the field, and soon they were all following.
* * *
“All right kids, out of the kitchen. Get upstairs,” Scales shouted as they came into the house and removed their coats. “We gotta talk in private. Go on, git.” He shooed his hands at some of the children who were clustered in the hallway, staring at Walter Hardesty’s pistol. “Sarah! Mitchell! Upstairs, now.” He led them into the kitchen and a woman as thin as Elmer shot up out of a chair, clasping her hands. “Mr. James, Mr. Hawthorne,” she said. “Could you use some coffee?”
“Kitchen towelling, if you please, Mrs. Scales,” Sears said. “Then coffee.”
“Kitchen . . .”
“To wipe my shoes. Mr. Hawthorne undoubtedly requires the same service.”
The woman looked down in dismay at the lawyer’ s shoes. “Oh, good heavens. Here, let me help you . . .” She took a roll of paper towelling from a cupboard, tore off a long section, and made as if to kneel at Sears’s feet. “That won’t be necessary,” Sears said, taking the wadded paper from her hands. Only Ricky knew that Sears was disturbed, not merely rude.
“Mr. Hawthorne . . . ?” A bit rattled by Sears’s coldness, the woman turned to Ricky.
“Yes, thank you, Mrs. Scales,” he said. “That’s very kind of you.” He too accepted several sections of the towelling.
“Their throats were cut,” Elmer said to his wife. “What did I tell you? Some crazyman’s been out here. And—” his voice rose “—a crazyman who can fly, because he didn’t leave no prints.”
“Tell them,” his wife said. Elmer looked at her sharply, and she hurried off to put the coffee together.
Hardesty asked, “Tell us what?” No longer in the Wyatt Earp costume, the sheriff was restored to his proper age of fifty. He’s hitting the bottle worse than ever, Ricky thought, seeing the broken veins in Hardesty’s face, the deepening irresolution. For the truth was that, despite his Texas Ranger appearance, the hawk nose, lined cheeks and gunslinger blue eyes, Walt Hardesty was too lazy to be a good sheriff. It was typical of him that he had had to be told to look at the second pair of sheep. And Elmer Scales was right; he should have taken notes.
Now the farmer was preening himself, about to deliver his bomb-shell. Stringy cords stood out in his neck; his bat ears went a deeper shade of red. “Well hell, I saw him, didn’t I?” His mouth dropped comically, and he surveyed each of them in turn.
“Him,” his wife said in ironic counterpoint behind him.
“Shit, woman, what else?” Scales thumped the table. “Get that coffee ready and stop interrupting.” He turned back to the three men. “As big as me! Bigger! Starin’ at me! Damnedest thing you ever saw!” Enjoying his moment, he spread his arms. “Right outside! Just a little further than that away from me. How’s them apples?”
“Did you recognize him?” Hardesty asked.
“Didn’t see him that well. Now I’ll tell you how it was.” He was moving around the kitchen, unable to contain himself, and Ricky was reminded of an old perception, that “Our Vergil” wrote poetry because he was too volatile to believe he was not capable of it. “I was in here last night, late. Couldn’t sleep, never could.”
“Never could,” echoed his wife.
Screeches, thumps came from overhead. “Forget the coffee and get on upstairs, straighten ’em out,” Scales said. He paused while she left the room. Soon another voice joined the cacophony above; then the noises ceased.
“Like I said. I was in here, readin’ through a couple-two-three equipment and seed catalogues. Then! I hears something from out near the barn. Prowler! Damn! I jumps up and looks out the window. Seen it was snowin’. Uh oh, work to do tomorrow, I says to myself. Then I seen him. By the barn. Well, between the barn and the house.”
“What did he look like?” Hardesty said, still not taking notes.
“Couldn’t tell! Too dark!” Now his voice had soared from alto to soprano. “Just saw him there, starin’!”
“You saw him in the dark?” Sears asked in a bored voice. “Were your yard lights on?”
“Mr. Lawyer, you gotta be kidding, with electric bills the way they are. No, but I saw him and I knew he was big.”
“Now, how did you know that, Elmer?” asked Hardesty. Mrs. Scales was coming down the uncarpeted stairs—thump thump thump, hard shoes hitting the wooden risers. Ricky sneezed. A child began to whistle, and abruptly ceased as the footsteps paused.
“Because I saw his eyes! Didn’t I? Just starin’ out at me! About six feet above the ground.”
“You just saw his eyes?” asked Hardesty, incredulous. “What the hell did this guy’s eyes do, Elmer, shine in the dark?”
“You said it,” Elmer replied.
Ricky jerked his head to look at Elmer, who regarded them all with evident satisfaction, and then without meaning to, looked across the table at Sears. He had gone tense and immobile at Hardesty’s last question, trying to let nothing show on his face, and on Sears’s round face he saw the same intention. Sears too. It means something to him too.
“Now I expect you to get him, Walt, and you two lawyers of mine to sue his ass from here to summer,” Elmer said conclusively. “Excuse my language, honey.” His wife was coming into the little kitchen again, and she nodded at his apology, acknowledging its rectitude by tapping it with her chin as it went by, before taking the percolator off the burner.
“Did you see anything last night, Mrs. Scales?” Hardesty asked.
Ricky saw a similar recognition in Sears’s eyes and knew that he had given himself away.
“All I saw was a scared husband,” she said. “I suppose that’s the part he left out.”
Elmer cleared his throat; his Adam’s apple bobbed. “Well. It looked funny.”
“Yes,” Sears said. “I think we know all we need to know. Now if you’ll excuse us, Mr. Hawthorne and I must be getting back to town.”
“You’ll drink your coffee first, Mr. James,” said Mrs. Scales, putting a steaming plastic cup down before him on the tabletop. “If you’re going to sue some monster’s ass from here to summer you’ll need your strength.”
Ricky forced himself to smile, but Walt Hardesty guffawed.
* * *
Outside, Hardesty, back in the protective coloration of his Texas Ranger outfit, bent over to speak softly through the three-inch crack Sears had opened in the window. “Are you two going back into town? Could we meet somewhere to have a word or two?”
“Is it important?”
“Might be, might not. I’d like to talk to you, though.”
“Right. We’ll go straight to your office.”
Hardesty’s gloved hand went to his chin and caressed it. “I’d rather not talk about this in front of the other boys.”
Ricky sat with his hands on the wheel, his alert face turned to Hardesty, but his mind held only one though
t: It’s starting. It’s starting and we don’t even know what it is.
“What do you suggest, Walt?” asked Sears.
“I suggest a sub rosa stop someplace where we can have a quiet talk. Ah, do you know Humphrey’s Place, just inside the town limits on the Seven Mile Road?”
“I believe I’ve seen it.”
“I sorta use their back room as an office when I’ve got confidential business. What say we meet there?”
“If you insist,” Sears said, not bothering to consult Ricky.
They followed Hardesty’s car back to town, going a little faster than they had on the way out. The recognition between them—that each knew the frightening thing Elmer Scales had seen—made speech impossible. When Sears finally spoke, it was on an apparently neutral topic. “Hardesty’s an incompetent fool. ‘Confidential business.’ His only confidential business is with a bottle of Jim Beam.”
“Well, now we know what he does in the afternoons.” Ricky turned off the highway onto the Seven Mile Road. The tavern, the only building in sight, was a gray collection of angles and points two hundred yards down on the right.
“Indeed. He blots up free liquor in Humphrey Stalladge’s back room. He’d be better off in a shoe factory in Endicott.”
“What do you think this conversation will be about?”
“We’ll know all too soon. Here’s our rendezvous.”
Hardesty was already standing beside his car in the big, now nearly empty parking lot. Humphrey’s Place, in fact no more than an ordinary roadside tavern, had a long peaked and gabled façade with two large black windows: in one of these neon spelled out its name; in the other Utica Club flashed on and off. Ricky pulled in beside the sheriff’s car, and the two lawyers got out into the cold wind.
“Just follow me,” Hardesty said on a rising curve of intonation, his voice inflated with false bonhomie. After looking at one another with shared discomfort, they went up the concrete steps after him. Ricky sneezed twice, hard, the moment he was inside the tavern.