The Hayloft: a 1950s Mystery

by Alan Cook

  CHAPTER 16

  On Tuesday morning I picked Sylvia up at the usual time. Sonny had deserted her; I wasn’t going to. I tried not to think about what might happen as a result.

  Tuesday marked the one-week anniversary that the freedom fighters, as we called ourselves somewhat ironically, had eaten lunch together. Ironic because we had different definitions of freedom. Except that I had defected the day before. But nobody said anything. Neither Ed nor Barney said that Dr. Graves had talked to him. And I didn’t either.

  As I bit into my salami sandwich that Aunt Dorothy had made for me—I had decided to bring my own lunch for a while, because I had been growing less and less excited about the cafeteria lunches—I prepared to tell the others what I had on my mind, namely that we could do something together in addition to just eating lunch.

  Apart from what Dr. Graves thought, our status at the school was mixed. Sylvia was still being snubbed by the majority of the students. She was going through the motions of being student council president, but she couldn’t generate the support and enthusiasm that she had before. It was a good thing the student council didn’t actually do anything important, as she told us.

  The three of us boys may have suffered some because of our association with her, but it was hard to tell. Barney had always been an individualist. Ed was still editor of the school paper, and his effectiveness didn’t seem to have diminished. And I was still the new kid, with limited acquaintances, so I didn’t have anything to compare to, except Atherton, where I had known many students and been moderately popular.

  I took the last bite of my sandwich, chewed, and swallowed it before I started speaking. “As long as the rest of the world is shunning us in the lunchroom, maybe we can use that to our advantage. Nobody can hear what we’re saying.”

  I looked around and verified the truth of that statement. The students at nearby tables were talking much too loudly to be able to hear us, and the jukebox played an up-tempo rendition of “Jambalaya,” by Jo Stafford, which added to the general noise level. Then I said, “Uh, how do you two feel about Dr. Graves?” I addressed the question to Ed and Barney.

  “Compared to what?” Ed asked. “Every school has a principal. I guess he’s as good as any.”

  “He doesn’t have the wisdom of Solomon or the diplomatic skills of Winston Churchill,” Barney said, “but since this is only a high school and not an international political forum, he doesn’t really need them.”

  “Has he talked to either of you about fraternizing with Sylvia?”

  They both shook their heads.

  I looked around again to make sure that nobody was paying any attention to us and leaned forward to be closer to them. “But what if he were somehow involved in Ralph’s death?”

  I had their attention. I repeated the catwalk story that I had already told Sylvia. I said my contact had indicated that Dr. Graves liked Ralph, and I mentioned that Dr. Graves had admitted to sometimes attending swimming classes. I speculated about him and Ralph having a fight.

  “He’s involved in anything to do with sports,” Ed said. “He helps out with all the athletic teams. That doesn’t prove he’s queer.”

  “Just because some beer-soaked kid told you a story about Dr. Graves, that doesn’t mean it’s true,” Barney said. “Maybe Graves gave him detention, and he’s trying to get back at him. Is he willing to go public with his story?”

  “No.”

  “Then it seems to me we’re still at square one. And even if we could find kids to testify that he took them up on the catwalk, that doesn’t prove he killed Ralph. Although we might be able to get him fired for conduct unbecoming a principal. And I understand that Sylvia has her own reasons for wanting him fired.”

  Barney looked at Sylvia, who made a face that was probably meant for Dr. Graves. I didn’t mention that I also had my reasons for wanting him fired.

  “Do you want justice for Ralph?” I asked.

  “Of course,” Ed said. “Besides, it would make a great news story. I could help write the story for the Express.”

  Ed was ambitious. Maybe I could harness that ambition. And after all, he was Ralph’s cousin, just as I was, even if not as close. “What we need to do is find out where Dr. Graves was during the half hour after the assembly on the day Ralph fell off the balcony.”

  “Or was pushed,” Sylvia said.

  “That was six months ago,” Barney pointed out. “How are we going to do that? Graves is a wanderer, anyway. He’s always roaming the halls.”

  “Which would have made it easy for him to go there without arousing suspicion if he had set up a meeting with Ralph,” Sylvia said.

  “Why wouldn’t he talk to Ralph in his office?” Barney asked.

  “Maybe it wasn’t just a meeting, but an assignation,” I said, trying to stimulate ideas, although I honestly couldn’t picture Ralph acting that way.

  “Ralph always had a girlfriend,” Barney said. “He wasn’t queer. I’ve read detective stories. We don’t have a motive.”

  I wasn’t willing to give up. “But might they have fought for other reasons? Is anybody interested in investigating that angle—asking around to see what you can find out?”

  “I’ll talk to Ruth,” Ed said. “She would know if Ralph were having a problem with Dr. Graves.”

  “Some of the kids still talk to me,” Sylvia said. “I’ll see what I can find out.”

  Barney said, “It does sound like fun. School isn’t much of a challenge. Maybe this will make it more interesting.”

  “I’ll talk to Ralph’s parents,” I said.

  As we walked out of the lunchroom, Ed fell into step beside me and said, “I can get my mom’s car this afternoon. What if I come over to the farm, and we could play in the hayloft?”

  “What, basketball?” I asked, thinking about Ed’s lack of skill in that sport. I had been shooting baskets in the barn almost every afternoon, preparing to go out for the team, but I wasn’t sure Ed’s presence would help me.

  “Yeah, and sliding down the haystack. I didn’t get to try that. Kate told me how much fun it is. In fact, she’d like to come, too. She’d like you to help her make a fort. She thinks that would be a blast.”

  And Kate was a lot better looking than Ed. “All right,” I said. “But dress warm. It’s getting cold up there.”

  ***

  We played two on one, with me being the one. I got a good workout trying to dribble the ball against two defenders. On defense, I was lax. I wasn’t going to guard Kate closely, and Ed couldn’t hit the broad side of the barn, so she scored most of their points.

  After I won a couple of games, Ed said, “I want to slide down the hay.”

  A child’s game, but what the heck. I led them up to the top of the haystack on one side of the hayloft and down we slid with appropriate squeals of joy. We repeated this several times until Kate suggested that she and I slide down in tandem.

  I wasn’t too sure about this. I said, “You can slide down with Ed.”

  “He’s my brother.” She made it sound as if he had a disease. “I want to slide down with you.”

  I guessed it wouldn’t hurt anything. I sat down at the top of the slide, and she sat between my legs. I gingerly put my arms around her. Otherwise, we wouldn’t stay together. Even though we both were wearing several layers of clothes, I was conscious of the fact that I had my arms around a pretty girl. And she wrapped her arms around my legs.

  We pushed off and went sailing down the hay chute. We landed at the bottom with a bump and a tangle of bodies. It occurred to me that this wasn’t child’s play anymore. We slid down several more times together. I began to have lustful thoughts and, with them, a twinge of guilt. What was Ed doing to protect his little sister? Nothing. He seemed to be having too much fun sliding on his own. He was ignoring us.

  Then I thought about my brother, Tom, who wasn’t here to defend his relationship with Kate. What relationship? They had only seen each other once. But she was just a kid. Too young
for me. I finally said to her, “Ed said you wanted to build a fort in the hay bales.”

  “That sounds neato,” she said, brushing stalks of hay out of her hair.

  I asked Ed if he wanted to build a hay fort, but he shook his head. So I took Kate up to the top of the stacked bales at the other end of the barn. She was quite strong, and together we wrestled the heavy bales into position, creating a room with a roof over it.

  I kept an eye on Ed. I was trying to be the good host. He had stopped sliding and was wandering around the floor of the hayloft near the walls, as if he were looking for something. I called to him a couple of times, but he said he was happy.

  We finished our room, leaving a narrow opening for a door. Kate crawled inside and said, “This is keen. Come on in.”

  She seemed to be enjoying herself. As a jaded senior, I didn’t feel quite so enthusiastic about playing in the hay, but I crawled in after her. It was dark inside. We sat with our backs against the wall of bales, squeezed together. I was aware of her closeness and felt uneasy. It was one thing to be touching a girl when you were dancing or sliding down the hay together. The activity gave you an excuse for putting your hands on her.

  But this was different. I tried to think of something to say. How did you talk to a sophomore? “So, what classes are you taking?”

  “Oh, the usual. English, history, algebra, biology, gym…”

  “Did you have Mr. Plover for science last year?”

  “Yes. It was so booorrring. I sat in the back of the room and talked to my friend, Nancy.”

  I quizzed her a little about his teaching methods and received confirmation of what I had heard before. I wondered if Sylvia planned to go in front of the school board with this information. Maybe before her father’s firing—she had the guts to do it—but would she have any credibility with the members now? I also wondered what she had been doing since I took her home this afternoon.

  “We’d have more room if you’d move your arm.”

  Kate’s statement brought me back to the present. The only thing I could do with my arm was to put it around her shoulders. Is that what she wanted me to do? Apparently so, because when I lifted it, she snuggled up against me. I was conscious of the fact that her hair was touching my cheek.

  Then she turned her head, and her face was touching my cheek. I turned my head slightly to find out what was going on, and our lips came together. She made no effort to remove hers. We kissed for a few seconds. I felt more and more panicky.

  I pulled my face away from hers and said, “We can’t do this.”

  “Why not? You can teach me.”

  With my vast experience. Or my half vast experience. “We can’t because…Ed’s here.”

  “Who cares about Eddie?” She sounded petulant.

  “Well, we just can’t,” I said logically. I untangled myself from her and rotated my body forward onto my knees. I crawled out the entrance to the fort, breathed the cool, fresh air, and felt relief. Kate called my name a couple of times, but I wasn’t going back into the spider’s web. She might be good for a nighttime fantasy, but the reality was too much to handle.

  I spit on my fingers and rubbed my mouth vigorously. The lipstick the girls used came off on everything. I climbed down to the floor of the hayloft to see what Ed was doing. He was still prowling around, as if he were Sherlock Holmes. Was he really looking for something?

  “Did you lose your virginity?” I asked, and then realized that if I talked like that he might guess what Kate and I had been doing. “You look like a building inspector.”

  Ed grinned and said, “This barn is well-built. I think it will last a few more years.”

  “Right. Now tell me what you’re really up to.”

  “I’m looking for Grandmother Adelade’s diamond necklace.”

  “If you find it, I get half the proceeds.”

  “If I find it, even if we split it among our three families, there will be enough money to send all the kids to college and build us vacation homes besides.”

  “Okay, I’ll play your silly little game. What makes you think Adelade’s diamond necklace is hidden in the hayloft?”

  Ed suddenly became serious. “You won’t tell anybody else about this.”

  “Look, I’m tired of secrets. My secrets and other people’s secrets. First, I didn’t want people to know I was Ralph’s cousin. But you and Dr. Graves already knew that, so it was impossible to keep it a secret. And I didn’t want people to know I was kicked out of Atherton. You and Dr. Graves knew that, too. Then you told me not to tell about Ralph standing on his hands on the balcony of the auditorium. It turned out that Ruth and half the world already knew that. Now the guy who told me about Dr. Graves taking him up on the catwalk swears me to secrecy, and it’s driving me crazy. I suspect other people know about it and aren’t talking. Anyway, I’m not going to agree to keep any more secrets. If you don’t want to tell me about Adelade’s necklace, fine. Don’t. But I’m not going to promise anything.”

  Ed smiled at my outburst. “All right. All right. Don’t get your knickers in a twist. I don’t have any problem with family members knowing about it. As I said, the necklace belongs to all of us. I just don’t want outsiders to know—outsiders who might tear up the barn looking for it.”

  “I don’t see any outsiders here.”

  “You’re right. And I know you’ll be discreet in talking about it outside the family.”

  “I have no plans to talk about Adelade’s necklace to anybody outside the family.”

  “I don’t either.”

  We looked around and saw Kate, who had managed to climb down the hay bales without us knowing it. She had hay in her hair, hay sticking out of her holey old sweater, hay everywhere. She had better clean herself up before she went home or her mother would wonder what she’d been up to. And I could be in big trouble. Or so my thoughts went as I was feeling the guilts again.

  Ed looked at Kate with distaste and said, “You’re always blabbing about bloody well everything to your friends. I hear you on the phone.” He spoke in a high-pitched voice with an English accent. “Eddie’s sweet on Carrie.” And in a normal voice, “I’m not sweet on anybody. I don’t have a girlfriend.”

  “At least, I don’t sound like I just got off the boat from Dover,” Kate said.

  “All right, boys and girls,” I said. “You can carry on your personal discussion later. Right now, we’re talking about Adelade’s necklace, and Ed is going to let us in on a family secret.”

  “Don’t take it so lightly,” Ed said. “I have reason to believe that the necklace may very well be hidden in the barn—specifically in the hayloft.”

  “The first question that comes to mind is who hid it here?”

  “Ralph.”

  “Do his parents know about this?”

  “No, and I couldn’t tell them. Especially right after he died.”

  “What’s the scoop?” Kate asked, breathlessly. “Geese, Eddie, sometimes it takes you an hour to tell what time it is.”

  “Since you’re both in on it, I might as well tell you the whole story. But I have to do that at our house because…I have a document that Ralph wrote. Let’s meet there after school tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll tell you what I know.”

  Kate looked disappointed. “We have to wait a whole nother day?”

  “Yes. And clean yourself off, Katie, or Mom is going to give you what for.” He looked at me. “And at least don’t tell Cousin Dorothy until after we get together tomorrow.”

  I didn’t promise anything.

  By the time we went inside the house so they could say good-bye to Aunt Dorothy, Kate was looking presentable again. I walked them out to the car. Ed got in the driver’s side. I opened the door for Kate to get in the passenger’s side. As I was saying good-bye to her, she turned her face up to mine and kissed me on the lips. Then she jumped into the car.

  I reflexively wiped the back of my hand across my mouth while I glanced quickly around to see if Aunt Dorothy
was looking out one of the living room windows. She wasn’t. And Ed hadn’t seen it, either. I was glad Kate wasn’t mad at me. Because that meant she wouldn’t give away our secret. One of many I had. Apparently it wasn’t possible to be a teenager and not have secrets.

  ***

  At dinner that evening, I asked Aunt Dorothy and Uncle Jeff how Ralph and Dr. Graves had gotten along.

  “Ralph got along with everybody,” Aunt Dorothy said.

  That wasn’t the answer I was looking for. Nobody gets along with everybody.

  “Why? How are you getting along with Dr. Graves?” Uncle Jeff asked.

  He was very astute. How should I answer that? “Well, he did let me attend Carter.”

  “Dorothy had something to do with that. She talked to him.”

  “Thank-you,” I said. I hadn’t thanked her before.

  My father had also talked to Dr. Graves. Had it been that difficult to get me admitted? If so, should I be jeopardizing my position by being friends with Sylvia?

  “You owe Dr. Graves a lot,” Aunt Dorothy said. “Without his help, I don’t know where you’d be. I hope you’re getting along with him.”

  I didn’t tell them what Ed had said about the necklace. I decided I wanted to hear more solid facts before I started any rumors.

  ***

  I had trouble sleeping that night. First it was Kate, about whom I felt a combination of guilt and hormone-induced lust. Once I got her off my mind, I started worrying about my association with Sylvia. It didn’t seem logical that Dr. Graves would expel me from Carter just because I was driving her to school and eating lunch with her. But he might be looking for an excuse to do it. So I had better stay on the straight and narrow.

  What if he told my father what I was doing? That would not be a happy situation. But what could Dad do about it? I wasn’t even living with him at the moment, and next year I would be away at college. I had gone against my father’s wishes before—notably with the episode that got me kicked out of Atherton. I couldn’t kowtow to him forever. And I hoped I wasn’t enough of a bastard to desert Sylvia now—as her boyfriend had done.