I found all that out later. There in the bathroom that night, I had more immediate concerns. I touched my hand to the bandage Pete had put on. It was wet and tacky, and I knew whatever Pete had done hadn’t been enough to stanch the bleeding.
“What happened to you?” Sheriff Meagan asked.
“I had a wreck on my motorcycle and drove the buckle of my goggles into my forehead,” I said, touching the bandage again. “When I got back I was a little woozy. Thought I might throw up, so I laid down in the tub so I’d be close to the toilet and not get sick on Ma’s floor.” It was mostly a lie, of course, but it came out sounding pretty natural.
“Who patched you up?”
“Pete Barlow, over at the Skelly station.” I touched the wet gauze again.
“Well, he’s a good mechanic but he ain’t no doctor,” the sheriff said. “Lemme go call the real doc, see if he’s still up. You might need stitches.”
“All right.” I nodded, and it hurt. I really wanted to lie back down again, but thought it best to stay on my feet. I gingerly stepped out of the tub onto the well-worn linoleum floor.
“You feelin’ okay now?” It was Ma, looking worried.
“Yes ma’am,” I said. “More or less.”
I heard the water in the sink running, and Patricia came up, washcloth in hand. “Here,” she said. “You look terrible.”
“Well, you look great.”
She turned her eyes shyly away. “Tell me if it hurts,” she said, rubbing around the bandage gently with the damp cloth. It did, a little, but I took it. She smelled wonderful, like Lifebuoy and lavender all mixed together. I was being tended to by an angel, and I didn’t want it to stop.
“God bless you,” I whispered, and she blushed.
Sheriff Meagan was the killjoy. As Patricia ministered to me, Ma Stean stabilizing my head with her big hands with Mrs. Davis and Mr. Clark looking on solicitously, he shouldered his way back into the bathroom and said, “Doc’s home and waitin’. Let’s go.”
Taking me by a shoulder, he guided me toward the door, with maybe a little more force than was necessary.
“May I go along?” Patricia asked.
“Sorry,” he said, looking back as he continued to guide me out. “I’ve got a few questions for Mr. Brown that might get kinda confidential. He’ll be safe enough with me.”
She nodded, and I gave her a little wave, even though I wasn’t feeling all that jaunty. In fact, the jolt of adrenaline – I was surprised I had any left – that had hit me upon awakening was fading fast, and I was getting all light-headed again.
We marched down the stairs and out into a night left humid by the passing rain. The sheriff opened the passenger-side door for me and as I started to get in, he said, “Just a damn minute!”
It scared me stiff. Now that we were away from everyone, was he going to lower the boom?
“Turn around,” he said, producing a pocket flash and running the beam over me. After a few moments, he snicked the light off.
“Guess there ain’t no wet blood on your back, is there? Or your butt?”
“Nossir,” I said. “Don’t think so.”
“All right. Be careful.” He helped ease me through the door. “I don’t want no blood stains on my seat covers. Hard as hell to get out.”
I felt better after that, but I still didn’t know how much I could tell him about what had happened without getting my ass into an even bigger crack. On the other hand, I didn’t want to just flat-out lie to him. So when he asked me to tell him everything that had happened, I decided on the spot to be truthful as possible but to keep my suspicions to myself. That included the suspicions about what was in my room. I just hoped Ma wouldn’t open it up before I got back.
I explained how Pete and I had been on an outing in the mountains and, coming back, had been shot at, returned fire, and hit a rope.
“Where’d it happen?” he asked.
I told him the location as best I could, using the names of people I’d interviewed in the area as markers. “Maybe they thought we were federal agents,” I said. “Revenuers.”
“Old Man Black and his boys live out that way,” he said, and as soon as he did I knew it was them. I knew it.
“That right?” I returned.
“I remember you had a little dust-up with ‘em the night you came to town.”
“Yessir.”
“Any way they would’ve known you were out there? In time to set up an ambush, I mean.”
And John, it was like a movie in my head. I saw once again that big damn snake in the road, saw, or felt, others that had been watching us from the woods, and I knew somehow they were connected sure as hell to Old Man Black and his oaf sons, just like that rattler that had attacked me at Jolley’s Mercantile. First cats, now snakes. In a flash, I was sure it all fit together.
“Naw,” I said, not eager to share my sudden seventh-sense insights with him. “I don’t see how.”
“You wouldn’t have been out there prowlin’ around, lookin’ for ‘em?”
“Nossir.” I figured we ought to be at the doctor’s about now. Mackaville wasn’t that big of a town.
As if he’d read my thoughts, the sheriff said, “Since you don’t look or sound like you’re gonna die real soon, we’ll take the scenic route to Doc Chavez’s, drive around a little.”
I didn’t like the sound of that, but I nodded anyway. My head still throbbed like hell. “You’re aware that under the National Firearms Act of 1934, it’s illegal for you to own a shotgun with a barrel length of under 18 inches. I didn’t take a tape measure to it back there, but I’m bettin’ yours ain’t that long.” He said it conversationally, like he was asking me about the folks back home.
“Actually, sheriff, I’ve measured it,” I said. “It’s a good eighth of an inch over the legal minimum.”
“You were just real careful, weren’t you?” he returned, hardness creeping into his voice.
“I was. The only reason I cut it down is so it’d fit in the sidecar of the motorcycle I’m renting from Pete.”
He looked over at me. “What kinda loads you got in that ol’ Remington?”
That was a damn smart question. It told me he still had an idea that I’d gone out gunning for Tweedledum and Tweedledee Black. If I’d told him “deer loads,” he’d know those could kill a man and that might’ve been my purpose. Bird shot, on the other hand, could inflict some pain, but if you knew anything about weapons you wouldn’t try to murder someone with it.
“Number eights. We were thinking we might see some dove, maybe quail.” This came out fast and natural, because it was mostly true. That’s the kind of shells he’d find if he looked in the shotgun. I’d just modified ‘em a little with those cut-up dimes.
“Outta season.”
“Yessir.” I tried to look penitent. “But we didn’t get any anyway.”
He didn’t say anything to that. We drove through the dark streets a couple of minutes in silence, and then he slowed to a stop in front of an old two-story set back behind a picket fence. He nodded toward it.
“Doc’s place,” he said.
“Thanks.” I started to get out, but he clasped his hand on my nearest shoulder, stopping me.
“Brown,” he began. “You seem all right, but you wear them CCC clothes and walk around all buzzed up like you know something none of the rest of us do. People ‘round here got the idea you know more’n you let on.”
He paused, his hand still on my shoulder. The light from a lamp down the street threw a dim halo around his head.
“My family’s only been in this town a couple generations. Ma and Pa come in back around the turn of the century to run a little general store. Mr. MacKenzie was alive then and still runnin’ things. He hand-picked my folks for th’ job – like he did all the merchants.”
That sounded like something I’d like to know more about. But I knew this wasn’t the time to be playing Twenty Questions.
“Most of the families ‘round here go a lot
farther back, and they know stuff I’ll never know,” he continued. “They’re clannish – and there’s more’n one clan, too. I might be wastin’ my breath. You may not have no idea what I’m talkin’ about. But for all that struttin’ around you do, pokin’ your nose around, you seem to be a pretty intelligent fella. So I’m suggestin’ somethin’ to ya.”
“All right, sheriff,” I said.
“This is where I live, an’ I’ll be here the rest of my life. You’re gonna be outta here in a few weeks or months or whenever. I’ve learned to live with th’ mysteries around this place. To leave ‘em alone an’ go on about my business. You might oughtta try the same thing. Stop actin’ like Black Jack Pershing, diggin’ up an’ bullin’ your way through stuff. Walk a little softer. Be a little less... curious. Understand?”
My fingers went once again to the bandage on my head. “Yessir,” I said again.
“Just advice. That’s all.” He nodded toward the house. “Doc’s waitin’.” Reaching across me and popping the passenger-side door open, he got out on his side and walked with me up to the house. The porch light was on, and when he knocked I glanced over at him and realized that he didn’t look like most of the people I’d seen in Mackaville, sure enough. His broad face was ruddy, but he was as pale-skinned as I was.
Well, I told you I’d give you the whole shebang in one helping, but I’m looking back on all the sheets I’ve typed and enough is enough. There’s more to tell for sure. So you’ll get another letter from me in a day or two. Hell, something new might have happened by then anyway.
Your long-winded pal and faithful correspondent,
Robert
P.S. I have a big favor to ask. Will you drive up to my house and get a couple of my books on magic? There’s one I have on were-animals titled The Human Animal. Also one called The Book of Black Magic, and another, Magic in the Islands. I could also use that two-volume set, the real old one, called An Examine of Witch Craft and Spells all about witches in the colonies and how they worked. You remember that one, I bet. We found it in that old bookstore in Minneapolis, and I talked you into lending me all of fifty bucks so I could get it. They’re all right there on the same shelf as my Weird Tales collection, at either end.
You can tell Mom or Dad that I sent you to get ‘em, but don’t say any more than that. I haven’t been telling them anything about what’s going on in this town, so keep all that to yourself. They hear too much and they might want to send me to the laughing academy in Faribault, like they did Grandmother. I know she really was nuts there at the end, but they might think the same thing about me if they knew half the stuff I’ve been telling you.
Anyway, please get those books at your first opportunity and send them first-class. I know it’ll cost over a buck, and more than that, I know you have to drive to Hallock, so I’m enclosing a fiver with this letter. Pay for your gas and the postage and keep the rest of it. It’s damned important for me to get those books as quick as I can. It really could be a matter of life and death.
June 15, 1939
Thursday night
Dear John,
I can only imagine what you think about this latest escapade of mine. The last letter I got from you is the one where you talked about the mass grave and the snake at Jolley’s and all that other stuff that now seems like a distant memory, displaced by this new set of circumstances I’ve written you about in my past three letters. Four, counting this one. Not that I don’t think about those other things. I’m just up against more urgent stuff now, which is why I wrote you about sending those books.
I’ve thought about telephoning you and catching you up all at once. It’s not the long-distance cost that keeps me from it. I want to have all this down on paper in case something happens to me. A record of what I’ve done and seen. This just seems like the best way to do it, sending it all to a pal I trust above everybody else.
The doc, Dr. Chavez, was a little guy, past middle age but robust, built like a beer barrel and coffee-and-cream colored like most of the rest of the folks in Mackaville. The “Chavez” indicated there might be a little Mex in him; I don’t know. He was real efficient, though, and didn’t seem at all disturbed about having to work after his normal hours. He let us in, saying hi to the sheriff like old pals do and ushering me into this room he’d made into a little home office.
Patricia had done a pretty good job of wiping the blood off my face, but there was some new seepage, and he took care of that and then pulled the old bandage off. It didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would. I guess the blood had weakened the adhesive.
He poked around on my forehead a little, “hmming” to himself, and that did hurt. He swabbed at it, put some stuff on it, and told me I needed a couple of stitches.
I braced myself. But I wasn’t prepared for what came next.
“I guess you’re the fella shot the Black twin,” he said as he worked on me. I almost flinched.
“Picked some shot out of his arm a couple hours ago,” he added. “Hold still, now. Number eight shot, looked like, and a couple little silver pieces. You got the better end of it, I’d say.”
Hoping the sheriff wasn’t paying too much attention – I didn’t even know if he was in the room – I said, “Pete, my friend Pete, shot him. Somebody opened up on us while we were out riding on his motorbike. Pete returned fire. I didn’t know it was one of the Blacks.”
That was kind of a lie. I’d known it as soon as the sheriff said the Blacks lived out that way. I might’ve even known it before that.
The doc finished sewing and stepped back before speaking again. “Yeah,” he said. “That looks all right. You might live after all.”
He grinned then and applied a fresh dressing. Then he gave me some gauze and tape, a tube of sulfa drug to put on the wound, and a couple of headache pills, telling me to change the bandage every couple of days and come see him at his downtown office in about a week – quicker if the skin around the catgut got puffy or started bleeding again.
I’d been sitting on a long examination table, and when I got up I saw to my relief that Sheriff Meagan was nowhere around. I’d hoped he hadn’t been eavesdropping when Doc Chavez brought up the silver mixed in with the shot he’d dug out of the Black twin.
“That’ll be three dollars,” said the doc. “And I’m throwing in something else.”
He turned to a medical cabinet in the wall just about level with his head, reached in and pulled something out as I dug three singles out of my wallet. It was a large, red, rubber capsule, a little bigger than a 12-gauge shell.
“A snakebite kit,” he said. “You got one?”
“Nossir. No, I don’t.” I took it from him. “How much I owe you?”
He chuckled. “Nothing. My gift. Anyone kicks one of the Blacks in the butt has my support.” His grin left. “I’ve got anti-venom, too, here and at my office downtown. Remember that.” He nodded toward the old monitor-top refrigerator over in the corner.
“I’ll remember,” I said. “Thanks.”
“Old man Black is crazy, and his sons are none too sane,” he said, opening the office door for me. “You’ll want to watch out.”
I said I’d do that.
The trip back to Ma’s was uneventful. Apparently Sheriff Meagan had said all he wanted to say to me. Just before he dropped me off, I thought again about telling him about the window and my room and what I thought was in there. But what if I was wrong? You know better than anybody that every once in a while my seventh sense turns out not to be a seventh sense at all, but maybe just imagination or wishing something was so. Like when Tige went missing back when we were both in junior high, and I was sure he’d gotten lost chasing something and was running around outside of town. I even thought I was being guided to where he was by my “powers.”
You know how that turned out. I got Dad to drive us over every farm-to-market road in rural Hallock, and when we got back Mom told me he’d been run over and killed the next block over. It wasn’t the seventh sense. I just wan
ted him to still be alive.
There was a chance this was the same thing, although in this case I wanted the something in my room dead, not alive. Or better still, not there at all. So I said nothing to the sheriff except thanks for the ride, and as soon as he’d left, I headed out to Ma’s garage. I had an idea, and this time it wouldn’t involve shooting up her boarding house.
I was hoping I had enough left after all the events of the evening to do this one last thing.
So I uncovered the big Indian and once again pushed it along for a couple of blocks. When I thought I was far enough away from Ma’s, I fired it up and headed for Pete’s house.
He lived in a little bungalow within walking distance of the Skelly station. Even though my strap watch told me it was nearly 11 p.m., there was a light on when I pulled up. Through the front window I saw him sitting in a rocker in his neat little living room, reading a copy of Liberty magazine.
If he was surprised to see me, he didn’t show it. He answered my knock, looked me up and down, and said, “Ain’t had time to change clothes, I see.”
“No. Been to the doc.”
He studied my bandage in the glow of his porch light. “Hmm,” he said. “C’m’on in.”
“Not right now, thanks. I’m wondering if I could borrow those two fire extinguishers you’ve got at the station.”
“Sure, I guess.” He reached down to a little table just inside the door for a key ring, which he handed to me.
“They’re carbon tet, aren’t they?”
“Yeah. Where’s the fire?”
Seventh Sense Page 12
