by Bill Crider
As interested as he was in learning the language of his ancestors, or some of his ancestors, he couldn’t concentrate. He kept thinking of Sally Good and wondering if she might not like to hear one or two of his musical compositions.
Even if she wouldn’t, she might not mind if he dropped in for a little conversation. As far as he knew, she wasn’t dating anyone. Maybe she got lonely.
He couldn’t just drop in, however. That wouldn’t be kosher. He should call first.
He let the phone ring four times. When the answering machine picked up, he broke the connection. He couldn’t think of anything to say. He thought it was too bad she wasn’t at home, as she was missing a real treat. His new songs were really quite good, even if he did say so himself. And he did have to say so himself, since nobody else would. He supposed others either had poor ears for music or were jealous of his musical abilities.
He went back to the kitchen, stacked the pizza box on a pile with three or four others, and got his guitar out of the chair to do a little more practicing on his new song.
The ringing of the telephone hadn’t bothered Jennifer. She told Sherm to go check the caller ID and listen for a message. While he was gone, she stood and glared at Sally.
“Well?” Jennifer said when Sherm returned.
“No message,” he said, and Sally was relieved to hear that he could speak. She didn’t know why she was relieved, but his silence had been somehow disconcerting.
“Caller ID?” Jennifer asked.
“Somebody named Benton.”
Sally was curious as to why Seepy Benton would be calling her, but it didn’t seem important under the circumstances. What was important was to get her hands and feet free. She had been straining against the duct tape, testing it, however, and it was wrapped too tightly to give her any chance of escape at all.
Sally thought about Jack’s cat and wished Lola were more like him. Hector was so vicious that he would by now have shredded Sherm’s pants and maybe severed Jennifer’s tendons at the ankle. Lola, on the other hand, was cowering beneath the bed, ready to give a savage hiss if anyone came close to her but not to do anything of practical use.
On the floor beside the chair where Sally more or less sat lay a coil of rope that Sherm had brought in from somewhere. Sally supposed it had been lying out of sight when Sherm and Jennifer had stood at her door. She felt like a fool for having let them inside, but who would ever have thought that they were planning to hang her?
She would have known if she’d seen the rope, in one end of which a hangman’s noose had already been tied.
The only thing that seemed to be delaying the hanging, in fact, was that Sherm and Jennifer couldn’t think of a good place to do it.
“I think the front yard would be best,” Jennifer said.
“Too much risk,” Sherm told her. “Neighbors.”
“We want people to see her, so they’ll get the message that witches aren’t to be tolerated.”
“We don’t want anybody to see us.”
“Right.” Jennifer nodded. “You’re right. We’ll have to do it in the back yard.”
Sally knew that wouldn’t work. While her back fence was lined with oleanders and while there were a couple of crepe myrtles in her back yard, there were no trees. But she wasn’t going to mention that. Let Sherm and Jennifer discover it for themselves.
Sherm was the one who found out. Jennifer sent him to check the yard, and when he came back inside, he said, “No trees.”
While he could talk, Sally thought, he didn’t talk much. She wondered if maybe he wasn’t as enthusiastic about the idea of hanging a witch as his wife was. He still had the knife in one hand, and he still looked menacing. But he didn’t look like a killer. Not that Sally knew what a killer looked like. The few she’d known had looked about like everyone else. So she supposed Sherm did look like a killer after all.
And so did Jennifer, who had that feverish look back in her eyes. Sally was convinced that the two of them had killed Harold Curtin, probably after Jennifer had found out he was attending witch meetings. Jennifer wouldn’t like that at all, and she would like it even less that she’d been working with him, possibly becoming contaminated by the very presence of a man who had worshipped Satan and participated in whatever barbaric rites the Houston coven practiced.
Considering what Vera had told her, Sally was sure the idea of barbaric rites was pretty far-fetched, but she didn’t think Jennifer would see it that way. Any rites at all would seem barbaric to her.
“What kind of back yard doesn’t have trees?” Jennifer said.
“Mine,” Sally said.
“Put some tape over the witch’s mouth,” Jennifer told Sherm. “I’m tired of listening to her.”
Sherm did as he was told. The upside was that he had to put the knife down on the coffee table to apply the tape, and when he was finished, he didn’t bother to pick up the knife again, though it wasn’t doing Sally any good where it was.
With her mouth taped, Sally found it difficult to breathe. She wasn’t bothered with the allergies that afflicted many people living in Hughes, so maybe it was just the thought that she couldn’t open her mouth that was distressing her.
“Ummmmmmmmpf,” she said.
“Shut up,” Jennifer said. “You’re already causing us enough trouble.”
“Ummmmmmmmpf.”
Jennifer slapped her. Sally was getting really tired of that, but she managed to fall out of the chair and hit the coffee table. Unfortunately, she didn’t knock the coffee table over or even unbalance it, so the knife still lay on it.
She wasn’t sure she could have done anything with the knife even if she’d gotten hold of it, since her hands were behind her and she had just about lost the feeling in them. The duct tape had cut off the circulation to her fingers.
“Pick her up, Sherm,” Jennifer said.
Sherm put his hands under her arms and jerked her off the floor. He tossed her back into the chair.
“What about her closet?” Jennifer said. “People hang themselves in closets all the time, don’t they?”
If they did, Sally wasn’t aware of it. The curse of being an English teacher was that all she could think of was a play by Arthur Kopit, Oh, Dad, Poor Dad, Mama’s Hung You in the Closet, and I’m Feeling So Sad. The play was nearly fifty years old by now and mostly forgotten. Sally felt that she was no doubt the only person in the world who was thinking of it at that moment. And probably the only one about to be hanged, too.
Sherm said, “I don’t think a closet pole will hold her.”
Sally wasn’t certain whether that was a comment on her weight or the closet pole. Sure, she was two pounds above the ideal for her age and height, maybe three at the most. Or four. But that was all. So Sherm must have meant that the pole itself was none too sturdy. And he was right about that.
“And it would be too low,” Sherm added. He was growing downright garrulous.
“Shower-curtain rod?” Jennifer said.
“Wouldn’t hold her.”
“Check it anyway.”
He wasn’t going to have any luck, though Sally wouldn’t have told him that even if she could have.
Sherm wandered off. Jennifer stood and watched Sally with her hot eyes. Sally hoped Jennifer didn’t decide to snatch up the knife and finish things the easy way.
Sherm came back into the room. “She has tub enclosures with those sliding glass doors.”
“Well, think of something!” Jennifer said.
If Sally had been a gambler, she’d have bet that thinking wasn’t Sherm’s strong suit. No wonder Jennifer was the salesperson in their business. But a salesperson needed patience, and Jennifer’s seemed to be wearing thin.
“We have to hang her somewhere,” Jennifer said.
Sally wanted to say, “No, you don’t,” but all she could manage was “Ummmmmmmmpf.”
“Shut up,” Jennifer said.
She stood with her hands on her hips, looking around the room. She stopp
ed looking when she saw the ceiling fan. She pointed to it and said, “We’ll hang her from that.”
Sherm looked doubtful. “Might not hold.”
“You know it will. When ours was installed, they cut through the Sheetrock and were careful to screw the base of the fan into something real solid in the attic.”
Really solid, Sally wanted to say. “Ummmmmpf” was all she managed.
“Doesn’t mean hers is the same as ours,” Sherm told Jennifer.
“You’re either part of the solution, Sherm, or you’re part of the problem. Which is it going to be?”
“Ceiling fan is okay with me.”
“Good. Now hoist her up there.”
Sherm turned a critical gaze on Sally.
“Won’t be easy.”
If the whole thing hadn’t been so ridiculous, Sally would have been insulted.
“Might need a step stool,” Sherm said.
“Just get a chair, Sherm. You can lift her. She’s not that big.”
Gee, thanks, Sally thought.
Sherm went to the kitchen and brought back one of the wooden chairs. After setting it underneath and a little to the right of the ceiling fan, he pulled Sally up and dragged her over to it. Jennifer trailed along behind them.
When Sherm got to the chair, he said, “Hold her,” and he shoved Sally at Jennifer, who staggered as she took Sally’s weight.
Sherm went and got the rope. He stepped up into the chair and tied the rope around the short rod that connected the fan blades to the base.
“Hurry up, Sherm,” Jennifer said. “She’s heavy.”
Sally made a promise to herself that if she ever got loose, she was going on a diet.
Sherm got the rope tied to the fan. He took hold of it and swung himself out of the chair. When he stopped swinging, he hung from the rope for a few seconds.
“See?” Jennifer said. “I told you it would hold. Now get down from there and hang her.”
Sherm dropped to the floor and then got back on the chair. Jennifer pushed Sally toward him, and he slipped his hands under her armpits.
Sally knew that she wasn’t likely to have another chance to get away, so she twisted herself as hard as she could. Sherm hadn’t been expecting anything, and he dropped her.
When she hit the floor, Sally started off toward the coffee table, where the knife still lay. She was on her side, ooching herself along the rug with her shoulder while she pushed with her feet. She moved faster than she thought she would, but then she was desperate.
Even in desperation, however, she wasn’t moving fast, so she didn’t get far. Jennifer caught up with her and took hold of her hair.
“This is going to hurt,” Jennifer said, sounding all too happy about it, and she dragged Sally back to the chair.
It did hurt, too, a lot, and tears came to Sally’s eyes. She couldn’t cry out, which was just as well. The noise might have made Jennifer even angrier.
Jennifer stood Sally up, not an easy job, as Sally went limp. If they were going to hang her, they were going to have to work at it.
After a considerable struggle, Jennifer got Sally upright, and Sherm took her. This time he was ready, and when she tried to squirm away, he didn’t lose his hold. He moved over in the chair, holding her with one arm while he worked the hangman’s noose over her head. He pulled it tight and stepped down to the floor.
Sally had quit squirming. She didn’t want to give them any help by hanging herself before they got ready.
“What about a note?” Sherm said.
“No note,” Jennifer said. “She wouldn’t write one anyway, and we don’t want people to think it’s a suicide.”
“I know that. I was thinking about a note from you about how she had been tried and convicted.”
“No. We don’t want to leave any more evidence than we have to.”
Sally didn’t know a great deal about police work, but she knew they’d already left plenty of evidence. Jennifer’s fingerprints would be all over the duct tape, and Sherm’s would be on the chair. The rope could probably be traced. They might even forget to pick up the knife from the coffee table.
“How will people know why she’s been hung?”
Hanged, you moron, Sally thought.
“The whole town knows she’s a witch, Sherm.”
“But what if they think she did it herself?”
“Nobody’s going to think that. Stop all the arguing and move the chair.”
Sally thought that Sherm didn’t really want to go through with it. Now that they’d come to the crucial moment, he couldn’t bring himself to kill her.
Sally couldn’t believe it was going to happen, either. Even when they’d taped her hands and feet and mouth, she couldn’t believe it. Maybe, she thought, the hardest thing to accept in the whole of existence is that you’re about to become something other than a part of that existence.
Sally thought about Sarah Good and the other women who’d been executed in Salem all those years ago. How must they have felt? Surely most if not all of them believed in their own innocence and knew the injustice of what was about to happen to them. They must have wondered how blame had come to fall on them. They must have wondered how they could possibly be about to lose their lives for something of which they were entirely innocent. There was no one to speak up for them then, however, just as there was no one to speak up for Sally now. They had been condemned, and they were going to hang.
And yet they must have believed that they would somehow escape. That they wouldn’t die at the end of a hangman’s noose. Certainly Sally believed that she was going to escape, no matter how things might seem to be headed in another direction. She would escape, and then she would make Jennifer and Sherm sorry they had ever messed with her.
“You sure about this?” Sherm asked Jennifer.
“Of course I’m sure. This woman’s done harm to you and me and to all the people of this community, and she’s gotten away with it. She wants to destroy the minds of the children with satanic books. Plus, she’s an evil woman, descended from an evil woman. She deserves what she’s getting, and nobody’s going to give it to her if we don’t. Everybody resigned from the Mothers Against Witchcraft today because of the scene she made last night. No one will stand up for the right except us. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do. What’s right.”
“Are you sure it’s right?”
“Absolutely. It has to be done, and we’re going to do it right now. Move the chair.”
Sherm didn’t look too happy about it.
“If you say so.”
Sherm took hold of the back of the chair.
“Ummmmmmmpf!” Sally said.
“Do it, Sherm,” Jennifer said. “If you don’t, I will.”
“I don’t like it,” Sherm said, but even as he said it, he jerked the chair from beneath Sally’s feet.
28
After thinking it over, Seepy Benton decided that Sally must have gone out to eat and that she would be coming back to her house soon. He thought it would be okay to drop by, and if she was surprised to see him, he could tell her that he had called and gotten no answer. If she wasn’t there, he could just come on back home. So he put on a fresh aloha shirt, a green one with parrots that were yellow and red and blue. He thought it looked pretty darned spiffy, as did the wide-brimmed, flat-crowned hat he put on his head.
Looking at himself in the mirror he wondered if he might be just a tad too rabbinical, so he changed to a western straw hat that gave him what he believed to be the look of an authentic singing cowboy.
Roy Rogers, eat your heart out, he thought.
The cats had come out of hiding, and, not seeing the guitar, they had gone to their four food bowls and begun to eat.
When Seepy came into the kitchen, carrying his nylon guitar case, the cats gave him a startled look and scampered away.
“I’m not going to play,” Seepy said, a little disappointed in them, though he knew you couldn’t really expect a cat to appreciate poet
ry and a beautiful melody. “I’m going out for a while. You guys will have to fend for yourselves.” He always referred to the cats as guys even though Emily clearly wasn’t. “You can come on out now.”
The cats had been fooled before, however, and they remained in hiding.
“All right, if that’s the way you feel, stay where you are.”
Seepy went out the back door to his car, a sensible Saturn instead of a trusty steed like Trigger or Champion. He put the guitar in the backseat. He thought that Sally would like his songs if she’d just listen to them. She was an English teacher, after all, and English teachers were supposed to like poetry, unlike certain cats he could name. And the musical accompaniment just made the poetry that much better.
He had checked Sally’s address in the faculty address book before leaving, and he knew her house wasn’t far, not that anything in Hughes was very far from anything else. He hoped that Sally was back from dinner, and he was already looking forward to their visit.
It took him only a few minutes to get to the house. It appeared at first glance to be dark, but he parked at the curb and got out anyway. Since he was already there, he might as well try the door.
After he got the guitar out of the backseat, he noticed that the house wasn’t entirely dark, after all. The plantation shutters were closed, but not so tightly that little strips of light didn’t shine through. Seepy thought that Sally just liked her privacy. He got a good grip on the handle of his guitar, squared his shoulders, and strode up the walk. Roy Rogers would have been proud.
When he reached the door, he set down the guitar and rang the bell.
Sherm, not being a professional hangman, had made one serious miscalculation, and Sally was grateful for it.
When he’d tied the rope to the fan, he’d left it just a little bit too long. So when he moved the chair from beneath Sally’s feet, her toes actually came in contact with the rug.
The shock of the drop had been bad, as had the burn of the rope on her neck, which felt as if it had stretched a foot or so. But her neck wasn’t broken, mainly because she hadn’t come to a sudden stop at the end of the rope. She had, in a manner of speaking, landed on her feet. Or her toes. She was able to balance there for a second or two at a time like a ballerina with an inner-ear problem, just enough to keep from strangling.
