Ann Petry

by Ann Petry

  “We were in love,” he said, casually, conversationally.

  The man’s face stayed the same, just the same. The woman sighed, or at least there was the sound of the exhalation of her breath. Then the man’s face did change, slowly, it became still, stunned. He’s gone into shock. I don’t think he even knows he’s standing there. He’s out on his feet, not lifting the gun, not doing anything just standing there with a forty-five in his hand.

  “Four to go,” he said. “The black barkeep and the Treadway Gun were in love.”

  The woman said, “Bunny!”

  He thought, It’s just as though she were a steeplechase rider, and something’s gone wrong with her hands and her knees, and he’s the horse that’s got to take the jump. She’s trying to make him jump, just with her voice.

  She said, “Bunny!” again.

  Then, he thought, amazed, Why he’s going to. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, he’s out on his feet, knocked out, but he’s taking the jump anyway.

  He heard the explosion. It was in his ears, his chest, his head, at one and the same time. There was one split second in which he thought, Legacy, I have to leave a legacy, for this multonmillionaire white woman who has the tremors, the shakes.

  “The truth is,” he said, and felt the great engulfing thickness in his chest well up into his throat, and talked through it, in spite of it, “we were in love.”

  He heard the woman say, “Bunny, what have you done?”

  He tried to laugh, and pitched forward on the floor.

  23

  * * *

  WHEN SHE OPENED the door of the sitting room, the two young men were walking toward her, moving swiftly, their hard heels hitting the polished floor in unison, as though they were marching. They were still wearing their raincoats.

  “He—” she said, and heard the gun go off again, and put her hands over her ears, and heard the explosive sound of it again and again. Then silence. “He—” she repeated. “The Negro confessed—and Bunny shot him.”

  “Is he—”

  “Yes,” she said and turned back into the room. Bunny was still holding the gun. She took it out of his hand and laid it down on a table. Though he looked at her, his eyes were fixed, unseeing.

  One of the young men said, “I think you ought to take him into another room, Mrs. Treadway. Let him sit down somewhere—but not in here.”

  She guided him into the dining room, turned on a wall switch, and the Gainsboroughs on the walls, the crimson draperies at the windows, the long polished table, the chairs seemed to move in the sudden light, and then were still.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “Everything will be all right.” He lifted his hand, shielding his eyes with it, as though the light were painful. “Sit here. You’ll be all right in a minute. We’ll take care of everything. Bunny, do you hear me? It’s all right.”

  Back in the sitting room, she said, “We’ll have to hurry. The servants are all off this evening. There’s no one here. But we’ll have to do something quickly because Mrs. Cameron, the housekeeper, will be back very soon. She always goes through the house, just to see that everything—” And then she said, “The blood. There’s so much blood. I can’t—”

  One of the young men said, “I tell you what you do, Mrs. Treadway. You get us some rope. If we had some rope we could tie the body up, use old sheets, get it away from here, in the car.”

  “Yes,” she said. “In the garage. I think there’s some out there. We had a runway for Camilo’s dog. There must be some in the garage.”

  It was still raining outside. Quiet, gentle rain. She walked toward the garage, fumbled for the lights, turned them on. There was a coil of rope on a bench, near the back wall. She carried it to the house.

  One of the young men met her at the door of the sitting room, blocking her view of the room. “If you’ll turn the car around, Mrs. Treadway, we’ll be right out.”

  “Captain Sheffield—Bunny is—he’s very much upset, of course.” She could see bloodstained towels on the floor. The gun was still there on the table. “I think he’ll be all right in a few minutes.” She took a deep breath. “There’s so much blood,” she said again, staring into the room. “I didn’t know—”

  “If you’ll go and turn the car around, Mrs. Treadway,” the young man repeated firmly, “we’ll be right out.” He closed the door.

  She kept looking at the door. “But these new cars,” she said. “The shift is on the steering wheel. I’ve never driven one of them. I couldn’t—I can’t turn it around. And Bunny is practically unconscious. He can’t drive.” She went out through the side entrance, went into the garage.

  She backed the Rolls-Royce out of the garage, drove it to the side entrance, and waited with the motor running, listening to the quiet sound it made, watching the rain, falling in myriad slanting lines in front of the headlights.

  When she saw them coming out of the house, their backs bent, struggling under the weight of that roped heavy bundle, she got out of the car, opened one of the doors in the back, got in and closed the side curtains and the curtain across the window in the back. Then she got out and held the door open for them.

  “We found a thin old rug in one of the rooms in the back of the house,” one of the young men said, panting a little from the exertion of lifting that bundle into the car. “It’s better for this than sheets.” Then he frowned, looking at the car, “Why are we using this ark? What’s the matter with the Packard?”

  “I can’t drive the Packard. I’m not used to the shift—”

  “But you’re not going to drive—you’re not—”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I am. You can’t be involved in this. Not any further. I can manage alone.”

  “Take Bunny with you,” the other one said quickly. “The air will help bring him to. He mustn’t stay there, knocked out like that. If anybody showed up, the housekeeper or anybody they’d wonder—”

  “All right.”

  They brought him out of the house, and he staggered along between them, like a drunken man. They helped him get in the front seat.

  One of the young men got in the car beside Bunny. “We decided you couldn’t possibly manage alone. Rick’ll clean up while we’re gone.”

  “Oh,” she said. “I couldn’t remember. I’ve been trying to remember what your names were. The other one is Rick. I see. But you’re—”

  “I’m Skipper. Rick and I were in the Air Corps with Bunny. Remember now?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course. It’s just since—there was so much blood—” her voice died.

  She seemed to be listening to the idling sound of the motor.

  Then she said, talking faster and faster, “The Judge wouldn’t set a date for the trial—he wouldn’t bring the Negro to trial—and Camilo was going to pieces—we thought if we could get him to sign a confession it would end these dreadful stories about her.” She sighed and her voice slowed, “We never intended to hurt him—we just wanted him to confess—that was all—and then when he did—when he confessed—”

  “I know.”

  “I’ve stopped shaking,” she said. “You know I was shaking so that I thought I’d never stop. But it’s gone now. See?” She held out both hands.

  “Good,” he said. “Everything will be all right now. Just hold the car to the same pace. Not too fast and not too slow. Steady pace.”

  When she drove down the long driveway, not too slow, not too fast, out through the gilded, decorated entrance gates, past the stone lions, couchant, the rain was still falling in long slanting myriad lines in front of the headlights.

  “Where do you plan to go?” he asked.

  “To the river.”

  24

  * * *

  ABBIE CRUNCH was waiting for Frances Jackson to come out of Davioli’s market. She had not gone into the market because she did not want to see the look of
sympathy that would come over Davioli’s face, did not want to hear the sound of heartbreak that would come into his voice, when he spoke of Link, as of course he would.

  Suddenly impatient with this waiting, with standing still, she started walking down Franklin Avenue, going slowly, turned into Dumble Street. Most people were home eating supper at this hour, though there were still a great many children playing on the sidewalk, calling to each other, their voices high, shrill. The Hangman was in bud, early this year. It was a pale green, not all over, just lightly brushed with it at the top and on the sides, like a prime coat on an old house, color daubed here and there, over the old weatherbeaten wood, not a finished job, but a visible freshening.

  In this fading afternoon light, light going, fading, dying, her house, Number Six, was a deep dark red; and the river was diminished in size, narrower. It looked like a band of tarnished silver, depthless, darkly gleaming, at the foot of the street.

  This river, she thought, this one river, and this street, Dumble Street, and this city, Monmouth, are famous now. Or infamous. Not just The Narrows. The entire city. Famous or infamous because of Mrs. Treadway and Link and that girl with the pale blond hair, and that oldfashioned car, a Rolls-Royce, with its curtains down. I keep going over it in my mind, over and over it, and I still do not understand it.

  I can see it, I can picture it. An oldfashioned car with the curtains down, side curtains and a curtain in the back. A patrol car started to follow the Rolls-Royce, and the Rolls went faster and faster, and the patrol car relayed a message to two motorcycle policemen. Then the men on the motorcycle pursued the Rolls-Royce, and finally shot at the tires. A woman was driving that carefullycaredfor oldfashioned car. There were two men sitting on the front seat. But the woman was driving. There was a body on the floor of the car in the back, a body wrapped up in a thin worn rug, tied with heavy rope.

  But she had omitted that exchange of words that had taken place between the woman who was driving the car and the policeman:

  Motor Policeman: What’s in the bundle, lady?

  Mrs. Treadway: Old clothes for the Salvation Army.

  Motor Policeman (to his confrere): You better check.

  The Chronicle had reported that the policeman who opened that roped bundle wished that he hadn’t.

  She thought, I mustn’t begin thinking about this again, going over and over it in my mind. It doesn’t do any good. And instantly thought of that picture on the front page of the Chronicle, a picture of Captain Sheffield and Mrs. Treadway, sitting on the side of the road, near the dock, waiting, already under arrest, but waiting to be loaded into a police car, and people all around them, behind them, and there was horror and disbelief on the faces of all those people in the background; kept remembering the girl, the Treadway girl, Mrs. Sheffield, and the pale blond hair curling, the delicately arched feet, and could see the girl lying beside Link, her head on his shoulder, both of them naked. And even now could feel rage at the memory of them in her house, and thought again, as she had ever since that night when the telephone rang and Frances told her, bluntly, almost rudely, what had happened to Link, that she could almost understand, could almost understand how Mrs. Treadway came to be driving that car.

  Shock, yes, pain, and a sense of loss, and infinite regret, and the familiar feeling that if she hadn’t failed Link when he was a little boy none of this need have happened. She had experienced these things when the Major died. There was nothing new in any of these reactions. But she had behaved differently this time. Because she felt as though something inside her had congealed, frozen, and that it would never thaw again, as long as she lived, as long as she remembered that question and the answer to it: What’s in the bundle, lady? Old clothes for the Salvation Army.

  She turned and looked back toward Franklin Avenue. Frances wasn’t in sight. What was keeping her so long? Frances had been so kind, always been so kind. I’ll stand here and wait for her.

  Frances had no family of her own, so she adopted us, adopted Link and me, looked after us as though we were her family. We were an outsize family, or at least we had outsize problems.

  We all adopt each other, or marry each other. Miss Doris has apparently adopted Frances. On the day of Link’s funeral Frances sent Miss Doris to look after me. Miss Doris looked exactly like a stone monument with a black straw hat on its head, gray gloves on its hands, but in motion, moving majestically down the steps, across the sidewalk, into the car.

  She supposed that all of them were shocked, Frances and Miss Doris, and Sugar, Miss Doris’ husband, and Howard Thomas, because she didn’t collapse into weeping. But she couldn’t. She simply felt cold and furious and indomitable. She was impervious to the stares, the comments, the photographers, getting out of the car in front of the church, unaided, going up the aisle of the church, head up, back straight, coming out of the church the same way, watching the service at the grave, as though she were a stranger who had paused for a moment to watch a group of people who happened to be listening to the burial service. She no longer cared what people thought, or what they said, she, who all her life had been governed by the fear of other people’s thoughts, had acquired an armor of indifference.

  On the way back from the cemetery, she talked about the murder, discussed it, tried to find the reasons behind it. She rode on the back seat of the car with Miss Doris and Frances. She had said, “It was that woman. That Mamie Powther. I should never have allowed her to stay under my roof. A woman like that starts an evil action, just by her mere presence. She doesn’t have to take part in it—just her being in a place—she’s a—” She had stopped talking, thinking, That isn’t true. This all started long ago. It started when the first married woman whoever she was took a lover and went on living with her husband, and the husband discovered the existence of the lover and so killed him. It has always been done that way. Why do the women always go free, as though they were guiltless?

  Howard Thomas murmured, “Catalyst,” loud enough for her to hear him.

  “It were everbody’s fault,” Miss Doris said in that cold menacing voice.

  “It were—” Frances said, paused, corrected herself, “I mean it was the girl’s fault, the Treadway girl. She seemed to forget that she was white and Link was colored, so when she made that silly charge against him—”

  “It were everbody’s fault,” Miss Doris’ hard metallic voice interrupted. “It were purely like a snowball and everybody give it a push, that twocent newspaper give it the last big push. The morning I seen that picture, that big black convict picture, with half his face gone from a razor, just a long hole where one side of his face should have were, all strew across the front page, I said to Sugar, Sugar that picture were pure murder, and this white folks twocent newspaper ought to be took out and burned, didn’t I, Sugar?”

  Sugar said, “That’s right,” automatically.

  When Howard stopped the car in front of Number Six, Miss Doris gave him a cruel jab in the back, and when he turned around, she handed him the doorkey, “Go open the door,” she ordered.

  Sugar stayed behind to help them out of the car. They went up the steps, slowly, all of them. Inside the hall, they stopped. Because Howard Thomas was standing quite still, and as they looked at him, puzzled by his lack of motion, he started backing away, backing toward the door.

  Abbie looked past him and saw that there was something squatted down on the staircase. She thought at first it was some kind of animal, the kind of thing you half expect to see materialize in the middle of a nightmare. The creature on the stairs seemed to have a body, small and partially clothed, but it was faceless. No face. It didn’t have a head, either, where the head should have been there was simply a black shiny surface, smooth, rounded, and very sleek.

  Howard kept moving away from it. There was a tearing sound, and Howard said, “Oh—” and his voice was as highpitched as a woman’s voice, “it’s laying an egg. No, it’s a foetus emergin
g from the womb. See?” he said, still backing away, as a round head emerged, kept emerging, and making sounds like an animal, “It’s fighting to get out of the womb, and tearing the flesh.”

  She remembered letting her breath out in a long sigh. Because J. C. Powther’s round hard head had appeared, and there was something black around his neck, almost like a bracelet, and something black and shiny far back on his head, and she had thought, Haile Selassie reduced to midget size but crowned, with a black and midnight crown.

  Miss Doris said, “You, Jackson, you,” in that flat toneless perpetually threatening voice.

  “The Major’s hat.” Abbie could hear her own voice, the sound of it, again. Because there was a note of mourning in her voice at that moment, note of mourning and the sound of tears, for the first time since Link’s death. They had stared at her, and she had looked right back at them, not caring what any of them thought. “It’s the Major’s silk hat,” she said.

  The round hard head, the dark brown small face, had ducked back under the tall crown of the hat, as though sensing disaster.

  Miss Doris had lifted one of those powerful hands and struck the crown of the hat a resounding blow, jamming the crown down, way down, covering the round hard bullet head, the domed forehead, the black inscrutable eyes that were not a child’s eyes, covering the small mouth that had opened in protest.

  “You, Jackson,” Miss Doris had said, in that cold metallic voice, “You set there now. That hat’s yours now. You set there under it. Sugar, you stand right there and see that Jackson sets with his hat.” She waited until the tall dark man said, “Yes, Sugar,” in an obedient voice, and then she said, “Come, ladies, the tea were about ready, come right in the setting room.”

  And now Abbie thought, aimlessly, The tea were about ready, and then, What’s in the bundle, lady? Old clothes for the Salvation Army.