We Five

by Mark Dunn

  Maggie touched Carrie tenderly on the shoulder. “Like the night we went to the Palais and you were carried a million miles away.”

  Carrie laughed mordantly. “By a man who probably should have been sitting in a prison cell.”

  Bella considered Carrie for a moment before speaking. “Carrie, you haven’t sworn off men altogether, have you?”

  Jane laughed. “Oh, I don’t think you have to worry about that.” At that moment Lyle returned from his trip to the lav, and all the women sitting at the dining room table, save Carrie, burst into laughter. Lyle looked at them speculatively and then checked his flies.

  “No, brother, we aren’t laughing at you,” said Jane, and then quickly correcting herself: “Well, of course we are. But not in a bad way.”

  Lyle, still looking befuddled, sat down next to Carrie just as Professor Prowse padded sleepily into the room from his early evening nap. “I thought I smelt Mrs. Hood’s vegetable soup. Is there any left?”

  “Pull up a chair, Reggie,” said Bella, going to her drowsy-eyed husband to smooth back his bed-mussed hair. “I’ll fetch you a bowl. You know all the girls. You don’t know Lyle. He’s Jane’s brother. Lyle’s a fugitive from justice. These chums of mine from childhood are his abettors.”

  The professor and Lyle shook hands. “You’ll be pleased to know, Mr. Higgins, that I—” The professor interrupted himself to cough away some accumulated phlegm from his throat. “—am a moral relativist. Whatever you did, you had your reason for doing it, and it isn’t my place to judge.” The professor yawned. “Are those Mrs. Hood’s currant rolls? What did we do to deserve that woman’s cornucopian generosity?” Assuming there’d be no answer to his potentially rhetorical question, Prowse bit off the end of one of the rolls and continued, “At times of communal crisis, members of society are forced by circumstances to do one or more of the following things, and you’ll usually see all of them employed in varying measure. One: ‘Extend, amend, or bend.’ The rules, that is. The rules of societal and civil engagement. Exempli gratia: Michelle Hood extending her wonted liberality to bounteous excess. Elsewhere, female factory workers and Land Girls being permitted to wear trousers. Cooks replacing butter with marg.”

  “But certainly not by choice!” pronounced Ruth. Everyone laughed.

  The professor quickly reclaimed the floor: “A chap puts on a uniform and suddenly he’s given license to kill. Or rather, to follow the ‘amend and bend’ model, the soldier has been provided a ‘justification’ for murder. By definition, it’s still murder, but we fix a wartime rider to the rule to extenuate the consequences.

  “Two. ‘Break the rules entirely.’ Both sides in this war have done their share of that. They’ve broken confirmed promises not to bomb civilian targets. The rules against killing noncombatants are ignored, purposefully flouted.

  “Three. ‘Anarchy reigns.’ All rules simply disappear. It is every man to his own defence, every man by his own conscience—should such a thing as conscience withstand the crucible of communal crisis.

  “One of my colleagues—Dr. Haverson, in the astronomy department—he’s conducting research on the relationship between coronal mass ejections—those bursts of solar wind and electromagnetic radiation that sometimes get tossed by the sun far into space—which means, on occasion, right at us—and thermospheric auroras—the Borealis and Australis—examining the degree to which the auroras are intensified by these solar events. I mention this because he and I had a very interesting discussion the other day about something quite extraordinary that took place in a small mill town outside of Manchester in 1859. It was coincident to the first recorded observation of a solar flare, and the solar storm that went along with it. The storm was the biggest there has ever been—at least since astronomers acquired the ability to recognise them. The result of this event was one of the most chilling examples of mass hysteria ever recorded.”

  “Mass hysteria?” asked Ruth.

  “The whole town, to put it in the vernacular, losing its bloody mind.”

  “I don’t understand. Just because the sky lit up with beautiful colours?”

  “It was a little more than simply beautiful colours. Are you going to eat that biscuit? Thank you. The whole sky lit up like noontide in a cloudless desert, even though it happened in the middle of the night. For the people of Tulleford it augured the end of the world. Armageddon. Whatever apocalyptic designation you wish to put to it. I mention this because it’s the best example I can think of for the kind of disorder and chaos that hasn’t really any underlining purpose. It’s the human animal in a state of utter madness. Chickens running about without their heads. This is what happened in Tulleford in the early hours of September 2, 1859. I fear this is just the sort of madness into which we will descend should this terrible war go on for too long. We’ll lose every covenant of civilized society. We’ll even lose our instinct for self-preservation. We’ll be like those who jump to their deaths from burning buildings—mindlessly trading one form of death for another.”

  Carrie got up and left the table, putting herself in a chair across the room. Molly watched her, along with all the others, and then turned to Professor Prowse and said, “Whatever your reason for bringing all this up, Professor Prowse, I don’t see it. It isn’t any wonder you don’t sleep well at night, if these are the sorts of loathsome thoughts you live with every day.”

  Bella rushed to her husband’s defence. “Molly! What a horrible thing to say!”

  Molly’s jaw tightened. “I meant every word of it. We’re all trying our best to cope with some very trying circumstances, and yet your husband seems to feel the need to tell us about something that happened years and years ago that does us no good whatsoever. I don’t want to hear about it and I don’t think my sisters do either. We’re tired of being frightened. And we’re tired of being depressed. And I don’t have to sit here and listen to someone who seems to want to make me—us—even more afraid and even more depressed than we already are.” Molly got up from the table.

  Professor Prowse rose as well. He looked thoroughly chidden. “I’m sorry I brought up the Tulleford incident. I truly am. Sometimes I forget I’m not standing behind my lectern addressing my students.”

  Molly wasn’t yet ready to suspend her reproof: “I don’t fancy your students would much appreciate this sort of talk either.”

  “You’re right, dear girl. There’s a proper time and a proper place for dispassionate scholarship, for detached analysis. This is neither a fitting time nor setting. I must say, though—and you must certainly see the inherent irony—that this does return us to my original thesis: that we live in a most extraordinary era in which the human animal is apt to behave in wildly unpredictable ways—ways that aren’t governed by any of the rules of conduct we’ve laid down.”

  “But we don’t toss away everything we are as human beings,” put in Maggie from across the room. She had gone to be with Carrie. “The species simply couldn’t survive if we did.”

  “No, Miss Barton. It could not.” Prowse sighed heavily. “My lecture for the evening is over. Let’s talk about something else. Or perhaps I should finish eating my tea in silence and then return to blissful, oblivious slumber. I used to dream. I don’t anymore. My mind becomes an empty blackboard. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  The words had hardly left Prowse’s mouth before the local air raid siren began to sound. It was still light outside. This evening’s visitation of terror from the skies was coming a bit earlier than usual.

  Bella Prowse arched an eyebrow and half smiled. “Ah, now the moment of truth. Do we sit about this table and ignore the howl of—how was it you put it last night, Reggie?”

  “The Teutonic banshee.”

  “Or do my husband and I fly to our Andy and to the tedious company of the Jossers and the Collinses who share it with us, and you flee with all the rest of the neighbourhood up the High Road to the Balham Underground?”

  “I’m too fagged to move,” said Jane.r />
  “Then I’ll carry you,” said Lyle. “We shouldn’t stay here.”

  Jane sat up in her chair. “But what about—oh, you didn’t hear. You were out of the room attending the necessary. There’s a theory among many of the residents of this street that Hitler won’t strike here because of a rum attachment to the Du Cane.”

  “That’s daft,” said Lyle. “Hitler may like that building. But that don’t mean Goering does.”

  Carrie smiled and shrugged. “Lyle does have a point.”

  We Five lifted themselves begrudgingly from their chairs. “Take whatever you like from the larder,” said Bella. “I also have playing cards, and Ludo, and Snakes and Ladders, and there are books in the study. They’re mostly Reggie’s so at best they’ll put you to sleep for a while. But do put a jerk in it. The station is five blocks away and you haven’t time to dally.”

  Ruth shook her head in amazement. “Look at you. You have become the mother hen.”

  “Just cheese it, Ruth. And you needn’t tuck those biscuits away so furtively. Take as many as you want and don’t feel the least bit guilty about it.”

  “You’re a love,” said Ruth, blowing a kiss across the table.

  We Six hurried up Balham High Road to the tube station. All round, others were doing the same—parents holding the hands of un-evacuated children; old men and women, who could not help being reminded that they had done much the same thing during the First World War, that some things seemed destined never to change. Some of those in the road wore haversacks and carried blankets and Thermos flasks, prepared for a long night. One woman scuttled along dressed in only a pink night robe and matching pink swan’s-down slippers. But others didn’t seem in any hurry at all. They had been through this drill often enough before; someplace else would get the first pasting—that was usually the way, wasn’t it? Or they would wait for Balham to sufficiently hunker down before paying their own reluctant visit to the community shelter.

  Keep Calm and Carry On.

  We Are Open for Business.

  Hitler will not defeat us.

  I will duck my head when I’m good and ready, you bloody flying monkeys.

  During air raids, the Balham Underground ticket window was closed. No one was expected to buy a ticket when the farthest they’d be traveling was down to the end of the station platform. Take your pick: southbound or northbound? As the six crossed the crowded booking hall to step upon the rattling down-escalator, they randomly chose the south platform. Others were choosing the same—people who, before the night was over, would find their lives coming to a swift, tragic end.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Bellevenue, Mississippi, February 1997

  “Is it a Duster or a Twister?” asked Carrie, ducking her head inside the vehicle through the open passenger door.

  “It’s both a Duster and a Twister,” said Lyle, “and I hope the battery isn’t dead, because I don’t know where I put the jumpers. I don’t drive this car very much. Jane don’t either.”

  “This was your daddy’s car, wasn’t it?” asked Carrie.

  “That’s right,” said Jane, “and I don’t know if any of you remember this, but Daddy had a bad habit of driving Winston around in the backseat. And he wasn’t in the habit of cleaning up after him.”

  “What are you saying?” asked Carrie. “That your father, as a rule, would just leave doggy doo-doo in his car?”

  “As a rule, it was usually more like diarrhea dribbles.”

  Ruth groaned. “Oh God, Jane, really! Do you mind?”

  “Well, I don’t smell any bulldog doo-doo back here now,” said Carrie, matter-of-factly. “Maybe somebody got in here and cleaned it all up.”

  “I call shot-got!” announced Molly.

  “Shot-got? What are you talking about, Molly?” asked Jane.

  “I think Molly means shotgun,” said Ruth. “I also think the Valium just kicked in. Molly, how many Valiums did you take?”

  “Two,” said Molly. “They were old and I didn’t think just one was gonna do the trick.”

  Ruth nodded. “And are you doing better now, peanut?”

  “I’m doing just fine. And I hope ya’ll don’t think I do this very often. It’s just that the dream I had—it was so real. It was so horribly real with the wind and everything. Do you want me to tell you about it?”

  “You already did, honey,” said Ruth. “Try not to think about it.”

  “I’ll ride up front too,” said Carrie. “Next to Lyle. That means Jane and Ruth and Mags—ya’ll will have to sit in the back.”

  Maggie didn’t hear this. She was busy arranging all the luggage in the trunk.

  “Is it all gonna fit?” asked Jane, coming around to monitor her efforts.

  “I think so. Even though it looks like Ruth and Carrie have totally violated the one-bag-per-person rule.”

  “I heard that!” shouted Ruth from the other end of the car. “The rule wasn’t fair. Carrie and I have a lot farther to go than the rest of you.”

  Carrie and Ruth actually did have farther to go—much farther. They had planned to spend a few days at Maggie’s Uncle Whit’s vacation house in Bienville National Forest—Carrie’s idea; it would give her a few extra days with Lyle—and then Jane had agreed to drive them to the airport in Jackson. By late that night they’d be in Los Angeles and ready to start this much anticipated new chapter in their lives—Ruth pounding the Hollywood pavement and Carrie attending a music school in Glendale.

  But first they all had to make it to the vacation house, and the weather wasn’t being at all cooperative. Molly walked over to the open garage door and looked out. The rain was coming down in thick sheets, the back mist spritzing her face. Every now and then the sky would light up, and the steady thrum of the heavy downpour would be augmented by the crackle of encroaching lightning. Molly turned and said calmly and a little slurringly to her friends, “I think we should probably wait until it lets up.”

  “And how long will that be, Molly?” asked Jane. “The weatherman said it could keep up like this all night. And what if the cops come back and do a stakeout after the storm finally does taper off? They’ll catch us right as we pull out.”

  Ruth studied the surrounding wet afternoon darkness. “How do you know they aren’t out there already? Sitting in their patrol car eating donuts and fixing to make all of our lives totally miserable?”

  “In this rain?” asked Molly.

  Carrie walked over to Molly and said, “It’s all planned, honey. Don’t mess it up. Don’t you want to see your daddy? The sooner we get to Mags’ uncle’s house, the better.”

  Jane turned to her brother. “Lyle, you should probably hoof it over to Ruth’s house now. Take the back way, like we talked about, so you’ll keep off the street.”

  “I know the plan. But first I gotta see if this shitty old engine is gonna turn over for us.” Lyle slid onto the front-seat bench and put the key in the ignition. The shitty old engine started immediately. He grinned. “I never liked Plymouths. But I’m liking Plymouths just fine right now. Where’s my umbrella? Hey, Ruth! Herb and Lucille know I’m coming, right?”

  “They know, they know. So skedaddle. Everybody else in the car. Jane, you gonna drive us to my house or do you want me to?”

  Jane walked around to the driver’s side of the Duster while Lyle threw on his slicker and slipped out the garage’s back door. “I think it better be me, Ruth. Daddy didn’t like just anybody driving his car.”

  Ruth rolled her eyes exasperatedly. “Your father’s been dead for four years, Jane.”

  “Humor me.”

  Molly had moved to the door through which Lyle had just left. She was still assessing the growing storm. On a sunny day she would have gotten a good view of Jane and Lyle’s junk-strewn backyard behind the antique store. Right now the cataract of water coming off the roof gave her the feeling she was standing in the mouth of a cave, right behind an enormous waterfall. Molly said, to no one in particular: “Just a couple of weeks ag
o Mags slip-slided us off the road and right into a dip—a ditch. We don’t seem to have a very good track record when it comes to riding around on stick sleets.”

  “Well, the good thing, baby doll,” shouted Jane from the driver’s side of the Duster, “is that Mags ain’t drivin’. I’m not letting her anywhere near this steering wheel. Anyway, once we make our secret pick-up of Lyle from Ruth’s house, it’ll be Lyle behind the wheel all the rest of the way, and he’s never had a single wreck.”

  “Sober,” clarified Ruth.

  “Which he is right now, smartass. So everybody get in the car and let’s get this show on the road.”

  Jane had stopped mail delivery and put a sign on the window of the antique store that read Closed for Inventory. Will Reopen Soon. Aside from that, no one else had any hint they were leaving town, so as not to raise suspicions, with the obvious necessary exceptions of Herb and Lucille Mobry, and, of course, Michael Osborne and Clara Barton, who were supposedly already at the vacation house and awaiting the arrival of We Five.

  By the time Jane had finally pulled the yellow-gold coupe out onto the street, the rain was coming down on a Genesiacal scale. Jane drove fifteen miles an hour to the Mobrys’ place—a quarter mile away—to pick up Lyle. The subterfuge wasn’t necessary. Nobody was watching the house, and the Duster wasn’t going to be followed. The cops had come the night before to ask their questions and had put them to Jane in a very routine, almost bored manner. They openly registered doubt over Will Holborne’s claim that he knew for certain it was Lyle who’d killed his friend and roommate Tom Katz. As it turned out, the Bellevenue police lieutenant who was handling the case and the county sheriff who was working with him had theories of their own having nothing to do with Lyle Hig-gins and everything to do with a string of recent murders in the area, each potentially linked to a Memphis crime syndicate thought to be muscling in on the casinos’ sports betting operations. An unrelated revenge killing based on personal animus wasn’t a possibility anybody was considering at this point.