A warm Saturday afternoon
Dear John,
I’ve been thinking about these letters I’m sending and I’ve got a couple of things I want to tell you: 1. Keep them so I can read them when I come back to Minnesota for Christmas, and 2. Don’t expect me to write long hair-raising passages. I’ll tell you about the scary stuff when it happens but you must understand the reasons for these priceless literary gems. They’re written to let you know what’s going on, so if anything happens they won’t be able to just throw my body in a bar ditch and pretend I just disappeared and they haven’t the faintest notion of where I went. (Who’s “they?” Hell if I know.) I’m also writing them to calm myself down and remind myself that my best friend ever since ninth grade is out there rooting for me. That’s why I spend time telling you about my job and the people as well as the weird things that have been happening.
A few days ago, when I laid it on the line with Mrs. Davis and Ma Stean, I really had some misgivings. I think whatever wild seventh-sense talent I have, those weird little flashes of precognition or knowing what someone is thinking/feeling/going to do, could easily be getting my ass into a heap of trouble here. Anybody else in my shoes would just be writing up the folklore, laughing off the occasional witch story, and having a good time. Then they’d leave and go on to something else and that would be all there was to it.
I wish I could do that. But because I know, I’ve got to dig deeper. I’m going to try to be careful, but I will figure out this whole thing with the jubilee and the cleansing, even though I’m more uneasy, maybe even frightened, than I want to admit. Telling you all about it helps a lot, and knowing that you believe what I write helps even more.
Ok, now that I’ve said all that, things have been pretty quiet for a change. Summer’s here, and even as lush and green as this place is it still gets plenty hot. Got a good breeze this morning and that helps some. Can’t smell the stockyards.
So all’s quiet on the Southern front. No more old calico to wake me up in the night, and thanks to Mrs. Davis I don’t think there ever will be again. You can draw your own conclusions about her relationship with that cat. I’ve already drawn mine, but I haven’t shared them with anyone, not even Pete, who I know is involved in the whole thing. In fact, he hasn’t said a word about it since he got me and Mrs. Davis together, and for now it seems right to follow his lead.
This morning I took the motorbike up into the mountains and did a little stunting. I love that old Indian bike and for a guy who never drove one before I’m doing pretty good. It’s heavy but powerful and I can pull the hills and mountain trails without a hesitation. Fact is, I can do fifty uphill, and out here, boy, uphill means UP.
What I did today was something I call “rimming.” The WPA has put in lots of new roads around Mackaville and they “crown” the roads toward the side of the hill or mountain. That means the roads slant away from the outer edge, which runs above everything from a ten-foot to a thousand-foot drop. What they did was build something like a little bitty sidewalk about a foot wide over the outer edge, a lip – like curbing – that’s turned up on the outside. This structure is supposed to help keep the gravel roads together, with the lip there to bump your wheels back from the edge if you get too close.
Rimming is a motorbike sport I invented once I got a little more confident about riding the big Indian. When I start down a mountainside, I’ll go as fast as I can, lean way over to the uphill side, and balance the bike up onto the top of the lip. I can really roar down a hill, sometimes seventy or eighty miles an hour. While it sounds risky, it still gives you an unmatched thrill, plus you cover ground a lot faster.
With the side car on, it’s even better. I found that I can lean over so far that the side car is actually out in space, acting kind of like an outrigger. Its weight really allows me to pile on some speed. Because my vision’s not top-notch, as you well know, I really have to be alert for the drains, which are little cut-outs in the lip for the rainwater to flow into. I suspect if I hit one of those in just the wrong way I would get a free and brief flying lesson as I cannoned out into space off the mountainside.
I got on an old logging road last week that seemed really smooth. When I came back from one of my interviews I stopped at the top of it. Because of all the big trucks the loggers use, there aren’t many hard turns in logging roads (something I just learned), so I put my goggles on, buttoned my leather jacket, and let ‘er rip! I roared down that mountain, the old bike vibrating and bouncing – one bounce I know cleared 20 feet – and, this is the climax, I hit a hundred miles an hour (or so close to it that it doesn’t matter – the Indian’s speedometer doesn’t work all that well). Man oh man, what a thrill!
Although it registers much lower on the thrill docket, I did get notice from the government that I’m now officially a GS-1. So technically, I’ve started a new (same old) job. Wonder if we rich federal executives get paid at a different time of the month? Guess I’ll find out soon enough. If nothing else, it’ll be nice to throw away that little note book Uncle Sam’s made me carry, and not have to put notations in it about every cent I’ve spent in the line of duty.
I’m going to the garage in a little bit and help Pete for a while, as per our agreement, then I’m picking up Patricia on the Indian, putting her in the sidecar, and heading to the Palace, the top picture show (of two) here in town. Yes, I finally got up the courage and asked her out – not face to face, but over the ‘phone one evening. I didn’t even call her from the boarding house, because I didn’t want anyone hearing me, just in case she turned me down. So Wednesday evening, just as Pete went out to gas up a car, I called the Davis residence from the gas-station’s office – and I got lucky, because Patricia herself answered the phone. While keeping an eye on Pete, I blurted out the invite, and damned if she didn’t accept. Although you know how I love the B-movies and would’ve been very happy going to the Maribel and seeing Wolf Call, with John Carroll (the poor man’s Clark Gable), a Monogram special, and some horse opera called Songs and Saddles, starring – get this – Gene Austin, that crooner who did tunes like “My Blue Heaven” and “I Dream of Lilac Time” a hundred years ago (or at least ten). But I got the idea she’d rather go to the nicer movie house, and that’s jake with me. So we agreed on the Palace, which is showing a single, big-studio feature: Jesse James with Tyrone Power.
To tell you the truth, I wanted to take her to the Gem, that big impressive movie house in Harrison where I saw Robin Hood with Pete and Duffy a couple of weeks ago, but she told me her grandmother doesn’t want her going out of town on a date, so I didn’t press the issue. I’m beginning to like that old lady, and the more I think about it the more I know she holds some kind of key that just might unlock the box of secrets this town has stored up.
I just looked back on this letter, and I see up until now I haven’t said anything new about the cleansing or the jubilee. That’s because there’s not a thing to report on either subject. I haven’t felt like the time is right to broach Mrs. Davis again on the subject, and while I think both Ma and Pete know a lot more than they’re letting on, I’m not comfortable about asking them, either. I could tell you that I have a feeling something’s about to happen, and that I also feel like Mrs. Davis wants to let me find out a little more for myself before she tells me anything else. For whatever reason, she maybe wants me to work for it. And to work for Patricia, for that matter.
One more thing, John. If anything happens to me, I want you to have any of my books or pulp magazines you want. Not that I think anything’s going to happen, but I think something could. If it does, show this paragraph to my folks and then take what you want from my bookshelf.
Your faithful comrade,
Robert
June 4, 1939
Sunday morning
Dear John,
Well, I don’t want to kiss and tell. Oh hell – yes, I do. I kissed Patricia last night, right on the damn lips, before I walked her to her door. There was a nice moon out, and she looked up at me as I was
helping her out of the sidecar, moonlight in her eyes, and I kissed her.
It was like being in a movie. That’s all I can say.
Before that, when I went to pick her up at her house just on the outskirts of town, Mrs. Davis let me in and had me sit down in their old-fashioned parlor. She even brought me lemonade. While I waited for Patricia, we talked about different things, even how my work was going, but none of the conversation went very deep, if you know what I mean. She did ask me how old I was – wondering, I guess, if I was some sort of cradle-robber, and seemed satisfied to find out I was only a few years older than her granddaughter. The house is a two-story, old but solid, and it’s immaculate, right down to the crisp white doilies on the overstuffed chairs.
When I complimented her on the place, she smiled and said, “Rupert – Mister Davis – builded most of it hisself, and he builded it to last. He took good care of me before he passed.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Miz Davis.”
“It’s been a long while now,” she said.
I felt then just a twinge of the old seventh sense. Maybe that’s what made me ask what I knew was an improper question.
“How did your husband die, Miz Davis?”
She hesitated just a moment before answering. “Cholera,” she said. “An epidemic. Got a lot of folks around these parts.”
“When?”
She looked at me, and the pain from his death still seemed to be flickering in her eyes. “A long time ago, Mister Brown,” she said. “We was awful young.”
Just about that time, Patricia made her entrance, coming down the stairs looking just a little self-conscious in a dress as blue as a robin’s egg, which made a real pleasant contrast with the coffee-and-cream color of her skin. She really is good-looking.
So we saw the movie, and it was damn good. Big budget, big actors, and a big story, all in Technicolor. Even the short subjects were top-notch: “Daffy Duck in Hollywood” and “Pie A La Maid,” a Charley Chase short in which a waitress falls for Charley because she thinks he’s a gangster. The newsreel had a little too much about the crazy little dictator in Germany to suit me, but other than that it was all aces.
Well, maybe I thought it was better than it was because I had Patricia sitting next to me. As long as she was there, I could watch paint dry and be happy for the experience. A bunch of her teenaged friends were there, too, and they gave me the eye pretty good, especially the guys. I let ‘em look. We may have been in some small-town picture show, but I was sitting on top of the world.
After I let Patricia off – the porch light was on, so I thought it best not to try for another kiss – I didn’t feel like going back to Ma’s quite yet. Since the lights on the old motorbike are in good working shape now, I figured maybe I’d just ride out in the mountains for a little while. But then I thought of something and changed my plans. Instead of shooting off into the countryside, I headed back up through town toward the railroad station and the cemetery. Hard to believe it’ll be a month ago tomorrow since I first rolled into town and saw that calico cat for the first time, sitting atop that crypt watching the train.
Now, I realized what I was planning to do was kind of a shot in the dark, but I didn’t have anything else to occupy me at that hour but reading or sleeping, and I didn’t really want to do either one. Instead, I had a feeling again, like I was back on the trail of something.
Little towns like Mackaville always seem to take good care of their dead. The cemeteries are generally well-kept, free from debris and weeds, and from what I could tell in the dark, this one seemed to be no exception. It was pretty big, too, big enough that I didn’t know where to start.
So I just used my instinct. My seventh sense.
It didn’t happen right away. I played the beam of my big flashlight over a lot of tombs and headstones before I found what I was looking for. I figured I’d hit pay dirt when I started seeing stones with the last name of Davis – which is a common enough surname, sure, but in a small place like this most of the Davises were probably related and the late ones buried near each other, connected in death as well as life.
But while there were about a dozen Davises buried there, I couldn’t find any stone for a Rupert Davis.
I started thinking maybe I’d heard Mrs. Davis wrong and her husband’s first name was something different. As I pursued that line of reasoning, I kept idly shining my flashlight over other stones, not really looking at them.
Then, I saw it, off to one side, a few scraggly bushes growing up around it.
John, this tombstone was huge. Five or six times the size of a regular marker, it looked like a stone wall jutting up out of the ground – rectangular, the front angled backward maybe 40 degrees, all apparently cut out of one big slab of granite. On closer examination, I saw neat lines of names, dozens of them, probably close to two hundred, each with a year beside it. At the very top, two-inch-high lettering was chiseled into the stone: ALL DIED 1889.
So these were the victims of the cholera epidemic, and the years were the dates of their birth. I ran my light down the rows of lettering, recognizing several surnames from my interviews. Then I found the one I was looking for.
Like I wrote earlier, there was nearly a full moon in the sky last night, but it didn’t give the same effect in the bone yard that it had an hour or so earlier, reflected in Patricia’s eyes. I know. I’m starting to sound like a narrator out of Ranch Romances or Love Story. But the setting had gone from love-pulp moonlight to the ghostly lumination in a Weird Tales yarn. I felt goosebumps rising as I focused on the name and date.
RUPERT DAVIS – 1858.
I did a little mental arithmetic. If Mrs. Davis was 75 years old now, which I figured was in the ballpark, she would’ve been only around 25 when her husband was cut down. That would have made her about five years younger than him – the same number of years between Patricia and me.
I thought about that a minute while my light danced around his name and the other names, all chiseled in the stone monolith. Then it hit me like a splash of ice water.
ALL DIED 1889.
Eighteen eighty-nine. Fifty years ago. The jubilee?
I’m getting the chills now, as I type this in my comfortable second-floor room, well away from that resting ground of the dead. Because what I encountered next wasn’t dead at all. There was a rustling behind me, and I whipped around and shone my flashlight on – cats. A couple dozen, at least, climbing out from behind crypts and stones and from God knows where else, lining up like little animal soldiers, all of them staring right at me.
And then, the old calico. She appeared out of the darkness, walking through the line those animals had formed, not stopping, coming on her cat’s feet toward me, closer and closer, stopping so close to me that her front claws almost touched the toe of my left boot.
And dammit, John, she looked at me. And nodded.
Truthfully,
Robert
June 6, 1939
Tuesday evening
Dear John,
I know I left you hanging with my last letter and I apologize. It’s taken me a couple of days of heavy thinking just to come to terms with what went on that Saturday night. I’m not sure I believe it myself. A cat nodded at me? What’s the old saying? Dogs look up at you and cats look down on you? This cat didn’t do either – she looked right at me, like a human being would do.
I guess I was kind of in shock after all of that, because the next thing I knew they had all disappeared, gone back wherever they came from. Once she’d marched up to me and gave her nod, the calico had turned and walked away. I could see she was still a little worse for wear after her dustup with MacWhirtle; a big patch of fur was gone from her right haunch, the skin raw and scratched up. Still, she carried herself regally past the massed felines there in the dead of night. I saw it with only moonlight to illuminate the scene; somewhere in there, I’d forgotten about the flashlight in my hand, and it was pointing straight down, beaming a moon-shaped tight spot on the ground, when
I remembered I held it. By the time I had the presence of mind to throw some light around the cemetery, the animals had gone, leaving me to wonder if it had been some sort of vision or eyes-open dream.
Anyway, I’ll tell the world I got the hell out of there.
It’s been almost three days now, and I’ve been working pretty hard at my job, which helps me not to dwell all the time on this town’s crazy mysteries – although I’m still keeping my eyes open, convinced more than ever that I’m on the verge of something.
For a change of pace, I’ll tell you a little more about the work I’m doing.
When I go out, I have with me a letter of introduction from the White House, signed by President Roosevelt. I’ll bet it’s really signed by a machine, but it impresses the locals. (There’s been one or two, not many, that hate FDR and didn’t mind telling me so, but I managed to interview them anyway – all except for one old geezer who threatened to unload a shotgun on my ass.) I think I told you that everyone on my list is supposed to have gotten a letter telling them I was coming and why, and that there aren’t many telephones so you have to take pot luck, figuring out where everyone lives – Ma Stean is very helpful with that – and trying to get to several people in the same area in one day.
I do it just how Ma told me: I pull up in front of a house, checking with the last name on the mailbox to make sure I’m at the right place, and keeping the bike running. “Halloooo, the house!” I shout, as loud as I can. I’ve learned the smell of sour mash, which indicates a still somewhere nearby, so I’m particularly careful about those places. I keep the motor of the Indian running because a few times some big hogs have shot out after me and the animals around here mean business.
That’s right. I said hogs, not dogs. Except for MacWhirtle, I haven’t seen very many pooches around, even out in the country. But I believe these big pigs I’ve encountered are every bit as threatening as a farm dog, not to mention uglier.
Anyway, when someone comes out and calls off the hogs (if any are around), I turn off the bike and walk up and introduce myself. They are pretty much always glad to see me. They’re a lot like the country people we know around Hallock and Northcote, the farmers and such, who don’t see many new faces in their lives and are hospitable to the ones they do see.
Seventh Sense Page 8
