Bellefleur

by Joyce Carol Oates

  But the other boys, their faces dark with blood, prematurely adult in their anger, wanted to hear—wanted to hear—wanted to hear everything. And then they interrupted one another, shouting. Why hadn’t great-uncle Louis known this would happen! Why hadn’t he killed them first! Reuben and Wallace and Myron and Silas, and Rabin and his brother-in-law too, and Wiley, the “peace officer,” and the others—whoever they were— Why hadn’t he guessed what they would do, and killed them first, in secret? Hadn’t he a shotgun near his bed? Why did he believe, even for a confused half-minute, that there was a lawman among that party, with a warrant for his arrest? (There were things for which Louis Bellefleur was not altogether blameless. Fines, for instance, which he had refused to pay, just as his father had refused to answer a certain summons issued by the justice of the county court at Nautauga Falls, having to do with suspected fraud—since the heavily mortgaged Chattaroy Hall, at White Sulphur Springs, had burnt down not long before, insured for $200,000.) Why had the poor man almost raised his hands so that his wrists might be shackled—hadn’t he seen, despite his grogginess and the confusion of the moment (but it was thought too that he might be blind in his right eye, since the eyelid was always somewhat lowered, and the entire right side of his face was paralyzed) that the men who had broken into his house and into his bedroom, at two in the morning, were wearing masks, and women’s clothing?—and thigh-high rubber boots?

  He had put up a ferocious struggle, the boys were told. Though at once his attackers took out their knives, and one appeared in the doorway with the pitchfork (Louis’s own pitchfork), and of course he was doomed.

  But why hadn’t he killed them all first! the boys cried.

  AT FIRST GERMAINE said that the men had all worn women’s clothing. Then she changed her mind—she thought maybe they hadn’t—only three or four of them—coarse feed-meal skirts that fell just below their knees, revealing their boots. And had they all worn masks, burlap masks, with crude holes for eyes? She thought they had—or some of them—yes, they had—all of them—all of them. Because she hadn’t seen any faces. Their faces had all been hidden.

  She told her story so many times, certain details dropped away, and others suddenly appeared, she stammered and went silent and began again, and wept, and lay back fainting on the pillows, and even those who knew very well what had happened at the Bellefleur home that night (and knew, even, who the unidentified men were) began to say that maybe she had made it up. Made up, that is, the murderers’ identities.

  Here is a theory: complete strangers might very well have ridden up to the Bellefleur house under cover of darkness, having been attracted by its spruce-lined drive and its size (for it was by far the largest private home in Bushkill’s Ferry at that time), or by old Jean-Pierre’s reputation (by now The Almanack of Riches, though shamelessly derived from Franklin’s Almanack, had gone into its sixtieth printing; and the fire at the White Sulphur Springs spa had acquired a certain statewide notoriety; and Jean-Pierre’s oscillating fortunes at horse racing were a matter of common knowledge)—complete strangers, perhaps men from the city, might very well have committed the murders, intending to rob the family and changing their minds at the last minute; and Louis’s wife, so brutally beaten, and terrified, might have imagined she could recognize voices. . . .

  But she insisted. She knew who they were: she knew. Though she was to repeat her disjointed story innumerable times, sometimes forgetting certain details, remembering others, though she was often to break down in the middle of it, she never wavered in her identification of the five men. Reuben and Wallace and Myron and Silas Varrell, and old Rabin, whose hatred for her father-in-law went back at least thirty years: those were the murderers. She knew.

  NIGHT AFTER NIGHT at the White Antelope Inn they had gathered, drinking, talking of what must be done to Louis and his father. And one night in October they made their move.

  Eight or nine of them, led by Reuben Varrell.

  (Wiley had not ridden out with them, nor had he willingly given the handcuffs to them, though, of course, afterward, he was to say nothing about the incident. The handcuffs were his—that is, they had been taken from his office—but he claimed to have no idea how the murderers had acquired them.)

  Dressed in their playful, outlandish costumes—young Myron had even stuck a woman’s bonnet on his head, tied beneath his chin—they rode the mile and a half to the Bellefleur house and, carrying knives and mallets and shotguns (which they planned not to use unless forced, on account of the noise), they kicked open the unlocked front door, and rushed to the two downstairs bedrooms.

  In one of them lay Louis and Germaine, asleep. In the other lay Jean-Pierre and Antoinette.

  They shouted: You’re under arrest! We’re officers of the law! Don’t move!

  In Louis’s room one of the murderers lit a kerosene lamp, and the others hauled Louis out of bed. It was their plan, their initial plan, to handcuff both Louis and the old man, and take them away to kill them; and dump their bodies in the lake, weighed, so that they would never be found. But somehow—somehow it happened—there was so much screaming from Germaine and the squaw—and the dogs were barking and snarling crazily—and of course the two boys ran downstairs from their bedroom under the eaves, one of them carrying a two-by-four: somehow it happened that they began stabbing Louis almost immediately. And Jean-Pierre was never even dragged out of his bed. He had no time to reach for the pistol he kept beneath his pillow, nor had the Indian woman time, as Germaine did, to crawl from the bed and try, with piteous clumsiness, to hide under it. With steel hunting knives and ten-pound mallets they struck both Jean-Pierre and the woman innumerable times, and killed them in a matter of seconds.

  Louis fought like an enraged bull. Wounded, bleeding from a dozen places, half his face frozen and the other half twisted into a violent grimace, he lunged from side to side, striking his attackers, shouting for help. It was then that one of the masked men, bellowing drunkenly, rushed upon him with the pitchfork.

  Louis’s body, recovered from the fire, would show evidence of having been stabbed more than sixty times.

  Seventeen-year-old Bernard was killed in a corner of the kitchen, where he had fled; the huskier Jacob, grown as tall as his father, put up more of a struggle, swinging the two-by-four until it was wrenched from him, and then turning, as blood gushed from a cruel wound in his throat, to throw himself out the window—but they seized him from behind, and threw him to the floor, and with shrieks and war whoops (for the blood lust was upon them, they could not stop themselves) they stabbed the boy to death.

  The dogs, of course, had been killed.

  The cat, it was thought, escaped: a burly long-haired gray tom, with one badly frayed ear and a sagging belly.

  And Germaine: with one blow of his mallet Reuben Varrell struck her on the collar bone, having aimed for her face, and his brother Wallace seized her by her long braided hair and pummeled her against the wall. When blood gushed from her nose and mouth, and she fell heavily to the floor, it was thought—it must have been thought, though in the commotion no one was capable of thinking—that she was dead. For they left her, they forgot her. They ran from the room, whooping and laughing, colliding with one another, wiping their bloody hands on one another, in a stampede to escape.

  The killings had taken only a few minutes.

  Five persons, in a little more than five minutes. And the retriever, and the half-blind collie.

  And then one of them said: But isn’t there a girl—?

  BUT SHOULD THE children be told? Should they be told everything?

  In order to understand the secret workings of the world—

  In order to understand what it means to be a Bellefleur—

  THEY STARED, WHITE-FACED. Some of them, like Vernon, pressed their hands over their ears.

  Some of them whispered, But why didn’t they kill them first!

  One of the girls—it might have been Yolande, long ago—took hold of both her pigtails and tugged at th
em, crying angrily: Oh, why didn’t she have a knife! She could have killed one of them, at least!

  AFTERWARD, RIDING AWAY, riding back to the village, exhausted, sober, drained of their exuberance, the murderers were to think that spirits had driven them to their frenzy. They had not intended to kill the women, or even the sons (though of course, if they had thought about it, calmly and sanely, they would have known Jacob and Bernard must die)—they had not intended, certainly, to kill Arlette. For she was the closest friend of Rabin’s brother-in-law’s sixteen-year-old daughter, and often visited the girl at home.

  But the air of Lake Noir, the heavy damp evil air, the whisperings and proddings of nighttime spirits, the shouting and screaming and war whooping: the men had lost control of themselves, they hadn’t been able to stop until everyone was dead. Until all the Bellefleurs lay lifeless, smashed and bleeding.

  The Indians had always feared the Spirit of Lake Noir, as an angel of mischief and death. It was that spirit—for it hadn’t been they, themselves—who had worked them up to their ecstasy of killing.

  They rode away, beating at their horses’ flanks. One of them retched dryly, another was whimpering to himself. Reuben kept saying, over and over, in a low dazed emphatic voice: Nobody will know, nobody will know, nobody will know.

  Behind them the house was burning. They had sprinkled gasoline throughout the downstairs rooms and tossed down matches. Within a few minutes the flames would leap through the roof and the walls—and all the evidence, they reasoned, would be destroyed.

  But who had done it—!

  The Spirit of the Lake.

  Though they detested the squaw, and thought it brazen of old Jean-Pierre to be living so openly with her (she was an attractive woman, not beautiful, not especially Indian-looking, nearly four decades younger than Jean-Pierre), as everyone in the village did, they had not intended to kill her. Or Germaine, or the sons. Or the girl Arlette. And someone had even cut off the dog’s head. Why, amid all that confusion, had one of them taken the time to cut off a dog’s head . . . ?

  (No one would admit to it. Most likely Myron was responsible, for he had been observed killing the dogs; but he denied having cut off the retriever’s head. I wouldn’t do such a crazy thing, he said sullenly.)

  ARLETTE HAD HIDDEN in her closet beneath the eaves. She had known—she had known at once—not only that her family was to be killed, but who the murderers were, and why they had come. Near-fainting, she crawled from her bed in the dark to hide in the closet; and it was there the men found her, crouched, so terrified she had lost control of her bowels and soiled herself.

  They shrieked and yodeled, pretending to be Indians, and dragged her out of the closet, and tore off her flannel nightgown, and for some reason—perhaps they intended to take her away with them on horseback, or out of the house that stank now of death—they carried her downstairs. The sight of the naked, struggling, terrified young girl, the reek of her panic, excited them all the more: in high-pitched whining begging voices they shouted what they would now do to her.

  But Silas Varrell, waiting downstairs, rushed at them. That’s enough, this is enough! he cried. He shoved one of his brothers away, and with a single blow of his mallet he smashed Arlette’s skull.

  NOW THE HOUSE was silent.

  Now the house was silent except for the murderers’ ragged heaving breaths.

  . . . four, five, six. Six of them dead. And so much blood. And they had intended only two.

  Query

  Query: Poems by Vernon Bellefleur.

  “What on earth—!”

  “What is this—”

  “Who put this here?”

  They discovered the slender volume in Raphael’s library one morning, a book of poems by someone with their name!—the name, in fact, of one of the recently deceased members of the family. The book had an attractive nubby oatmeal-colored binding with stiff grayish pages and fine, delicate type whose ink looked already faded. How odd, how very odd, and who was the prankster who had slyly laid the book atop a cabinet in the library?

  “This,” Noel said slowly, paging through the book, “is very odd.”

  Cornelia peered over his shoulder. “Do the poems rhyme? I don’t think they rhyme.”

  They passed the book around, turning pages quickly and suspiciously, pausing to read a line here and there with a growing sense of unrest. For was it possible . . . ? Was it possible that Vernon had not drowned, after all, but had managed to escape the Varrells . . . ? And now he would expose the Bellefleurs to the world; now nothing could stop him from telling their most intimate secrets.

  What was most disturbing, the poems made little sense. There were strange unfamiliar words embedded in them, ungiving as chips of mica, and sentences did not tamely complete themselves but trailed off into nowhere—into nothing. Lily said uncertainly, “But some of the poems are beautiful, aren’t they . . . ?”

  No one answered her. Cornelia said, “It’s like code! Riddles! Nasty things you can’t understand without breaking your head over!”

  Ewan seized the book and flipped the pages angrily. “Do you suppose it is possible,” he said in a low dangerous voice to his father, “that our Vernon did not drown after all. . . .”

  “Impossible,” Noel said curtly, taking the book from him and shutting it with a snap.

  IT WAS NEVER to be determined, though all the children and servants were interrogated, who had put the book on the cabinet: who had acquired this preposterous Query by a preposterous Vernon Bellefleur. For of course the name was a forgery. Or, even if it were legitimate, and did belong to the poet, the poet was not their Vernon. “Why, that poor fool went mental at the end,” Aveline said, “preaching against his family the way he did. How could he find a publisher, raving mad as he was? This can’t be him.”

  “Better yet,” Ewan said, “how could he save himself from drowning? He couldn’t even swim as a boy.”

  “We could trace him,” Gideon said disdainfully, “through the publisher or the printer. If we chose to.”

  “But there’s no address given! Only the name of the press, Anubis, and doesn’t that sound as much an imposture as “Vernon Bellefleur” itself?” Jasper said. (For he was one of the leading suspects—he traveled often to the city, by himself, on business errands for Leah—and he wanted to dissociate himself from the volume altogether.)

  It was thought finally that Christabel or Bromwell, those rebellious unhappy children, might have sent the book through the mail, simply to stir up trouble. For of course Vernon was dead. Their Vernon was dead.

  QUERY REMAINED ON the cabinet top for nearly two weeks. No one cared to tell Hiram about it, yet no one (for such was the impish nature of the Bellefleurs) wanted to spare him the experience of discovering it. Every day Noel and Cornelia whispered together: Has Hiram read the thing yet? Has he gone into the library, has he picked it up?

  Cornelia was convinced that the author was Vernon. Her beloved nephew Vernon, whom she had somehow, unaccountably, paid no attention to during his lifetime. “And I just know those poems are about us, in some hideous code we can’t read!” she said, pressing her beringed hand against her bosom. “He was always so strange, even before he turned against us.”

  “Don’t be absurd, old woman,” Noel said. “That Vernon is gone.”

  “But he always had talent—! Whatever talent is. He was always—oh, you know—he was always so—so spirited, so hopeful—The way he used to tag around after Leah—”

  “The words that came out of his mouth were incomprehensible!” Noel said angrily. “Do you call that talent—?”

  But he was not really angry. In the past several months—since the “difficulties” with the fruit pickers, and his brother Jean-Pierre’s abrupt and unceremonious return to Powhatassie (where the old man was now ensconced, for therapeutic purposes, about which the Bellefleurs were in unanimous agreement, in the Wystan Sheeler Memorial Wing of the prison)—he had acquired a slapdash, almost hearty air, and looked more th
an ever like a cocky old bantam, restless for a fight. The family’s amazing financial successes struck him as unreal, and he could not see, as Leah so frequently and so teasingly insisted, that they had something to do with Germaine: he had lived so long with failure, he could not put much faith in the present. Success was a pair of $200 Spanish-styled boots, failure was the old filth-softened pair of slippers he wore about the house. The one fitted tightly, the other was sprawling and splayed as his old feet themselves. There was no question which he preferred.

  “We are millionaires once again,” his wife sometimes whispered, silly as a girl. “And Leah promises more—even more!”

  Noel grunted a reply, discourteously.

  He liked to turn family conversations around to problems, like the mysterious “Vernon Bellefleur” whose book of poems they had been privileged to read. Or the inexplicable leaks in the new slate roof which had cost them—ah, God!—so many thousands of dollars. Half the new trees in the garden were dying of a mysterious black spot blight, had they noticed? And what of the rebellious old couple (great-grandmother Elvira and the old man from the flood, her absurd bridegroom, who had begun to strut about like a member of the family, turning his foolish paternal smile on anyone who approached) and their plans to move across the lake—? They were openly defying Leah; they insisted upon going to live with great-aunt Matilde to spend their “twilight years,” as they called them, in solitude; and naturally this would prevent Leah from tearing down the old camp and rebuilding it according to her and her architect’s elaborate plans. You see, you see, Noel liked to chuckle, things are always going against the grain—!