Cold moon over Babylon

by Michael McDowell

  Chapter 21

  The following morning, after running errands in town, Ginny Darrish drove out across the Styx River to the blueberry farm. She found Evelyn, pale and red-eyed, on the back latticed porch among the boxes of blueberries. Ginny sat down cheerfully beside her friend.

  Jerry, who had seen the car approach, came up to speak; but just after he had done so, Evelyn turned to him, and said: “I'm going to tell her...”

  “I wish you wouldn't,” said Jerry, tight-lipped.

  “I have to,” said Evelyn.

  “Tell me what?” cried Ginny happily. The mystery excited her,

  “I won’t be here, then,” said Jerry, and nodding once more to Ginny, he returned to the supervision of the Boy Scouts in the patch.

  Then, pausing only when a Scout entered briefly with his several boxes of berries, Evelyn told Ginny her suspicions about Nathan Redfield. Ginny heard all of this with wide eyes beneath her silver hair, but made no protest of disbelief.

  “The sheriff was out here yesterday,” concluded Evelyn, ”and Jerry told him this too, but he wouldn't listen. He knows it’s true, but he doesn’t want to go against the Redfields; or else he’s out there protecting Nathan for all he’s worth.”

  “Well,” said Ginny cautiously: “I just saw Nathan and Ted together this morning at the drugstore, sitting in the next booth like they were a couple of junior girls talking about their Friday night dates, and they didn’t say a word after I came in, I can tell you.”

  Evelyn shook her head significantly, and with some distress: “That means that the sheriff in on this.”

  “It’s possible, I guess,” said Ginny cautiously. “But you know, Evelyn, don’t you, that those two have been close for a long while. It’s not the first time that I’ve seen them there in the drugstore booth together.”

  “Ginny, listen—”

  “What?”

  “Do you think Charles would take us on as his clients in this? Ted Hale’s not going to shake a finger to arrest Nathan Redfield, and so I’ve got to get at him some other way. I don’t know what Charles can do, but he’s a lawyer, and he ought to have some ideas—”

  “Well, I think he just might. There’s no love lost between Charles and Nathan. And he certainly will if I talk to him about it.”

  “Would you?”

  Ginny nodded, and placed a pink hand atop Evelyn’s blue-stained fingers. She dug her lavender fingernails affectionately into the bereaved woman’s wrist.

  “I don’t know what we could afford to pay Mm right now,” said Evelyn hesitantly.

  Ginny threw her hands up over her ears. “Evelyn Larkin!” she cried: “I’m not going to listen to you talk about money! It makes me giddy, I tell you, it just makes me giddy to hear it!”

  Evelyn smiled weakly: “Thank you, Ginny,” she whispered. “Jerry doesn’t want me to do this, but”—she faltered, then picked up again bravely—“but my little girl was murdered, and I’d like to take the man who did it and split him open from top to bottom, then sew him back up with barbed wire.”

  Leaning forward to kiss Evelyn on the cheek, Ginny whispered: “If Nathan Redfield did this, you and I will see to it that there’s not enough left of him to get tied to a bicycle.”

  Chapter 22

  Charles Darrish, occupied the offices that his father had had before him. These were five rooms on the second floor of a brick building only several doors down from the town hall, and on the same side of the street. Florida lawbooks dating from the 1830’s and containing countless decisions handed down in the cases of runaway slaves, lined the walls in glass bookshelves. These had not been disturbed in sixty years. Newer lawbooks, which Darrish never looked at either, lay stacked in piles in all the corners. The rooms were dark and dusty, and wasps that had constructed nests at the top of the high paper-shaded windows, flew lazily about the hot airless rooms. The furniture for clients in the waiting room was of green-painted wicker with light green cushions that Ginny had made in the first years of their marriage. The walls were of dark- stained pine that after a century still bled sap in hot weather.

  Charles Darrish, a bulky awkward man with a perpetual squint, sat at a large table in the innermost of the rooms; it was piled high with briefs, and file folders, and summonses, and legal documents, unanswered letters, thin journals five years old that hadn’t yet been token out of their brown paper wrappers. A large floor fan underneath the table cooled his ankles and periodically sucked in the cuffs of his pants, but otherwise had no effect in the stifling chamber.

  In barge chairs on the other side of the table sat Evelyn Larkin and Jerry. Squinting at them over the high piles of dusty papers, Darrish had listened intently while Evelyn explained why she was convinced that Nathan Redfield had murdered her granddaughter. Then he had refused to take the case.

  “There isn’t any case, Miz Larkin, there’s just no case at all. Jerry,” he said, squinting in a slightly different direction: “You can see there's no case, cain’t you?”

  “But he did it!” coed Evelyn: “We know that he did it!”

  “You may know it,” said Darrish, “or you may think that you know it, but you just cain’t prove it. And, Miz Larkin, even if I was to take it on, I couldn’t prove it either. There’s no proof, and right now, it don’t look like there’s going to be any. Nathan Redfield’s not going to jail for murdering Margaret unless somebody comes up with five white witnesses and a Polaroid of him tying the bicycle to her ankles—and that don’t seem likely to be forthcoming.”

  Jerry gazed at his grandmother pleadingly, wanting them very much to leave. He could not look at Darrish for his embarrassment.

  Did you talk to Ginny today?” asked Evelyn sharply.

  “Ginny called,” Darrish admitted: “And she told the you were coming. I wasn’t surprised to see you here when I got back from lunch and I knew what you were here for, If you could have brought me some proof, just a little bit of something that I could have tagged in the courtroom, then I might have considered it, Miz Larkin, but if I took you on, I’d be making a fool of you, and a fool of myself to boot.”

  “Nathan Redfield got to you first!” Evelyn cried.

  Darrish looked up sharply, and for the first time, Jerry made out the pupils of his eyes. “Miz Larkin, you know about how well Ginny and Nathan get on. I handle the CP&M, but Nathan don’t even speak to me on the street. Besides, how would Nathan know that you were coming here?”

  “Ted Hale told him.”

  “Grandma—” protested Jerry.

  “Miz Larkin,” said Darrish quietly: “I’d love to help you, I’d like nothing more in the world than to go and fight for you in the court, and string up the man who killed Margaret. But whoever it is, I don’t think it’s Nathan Redfield, and even if it is, right now, with what we have, with what the sheriff has, we couldn’t convict him.”

  “Ginny told me you would help us!” charged Evelyn.

  “Miz Larkin, if I could—”

  “Grandma,” said Jerry in a low voice: “Mr. Darrish was real nice in listening to us, but he cain’t help us, and I knew he couldn’t, and I told you he couldn’t. Now we ought to go right now, and not take up any more of his time.”

  Charles leaned back in his swivel chair, and peered blankly at the bookcase behind Evelyn and Jerry, as if the conversation did not concern him.

  Evelyn rose precipitately, and hurried out of the office into the long dark hallway. Jerry remained behind a moment longer: “Thank you, Mr. Darrish, we really appreciate you listening to us. Grandma wants to do something about Margaret, and she just cain’t accept it yet that there’s nothing to be done.”

  “I know, Jerry,” said Darrish, blinking rapidly in apparent compassion. “You did right in coming here, because sooner or later Evelyn’ll come out of this, and she’ll realize that it wasn’t Nathan that killed Margaret, but it may be she’ll have to hear everybody in town tell it to her before she does accept it.”

  “I got to go,” said Jerry apologetic
ally. He had glanced out into the hallway, where Evelyn stood impatiently awaiting him. He eased out the door, and closed it softly.

  Chapter 23

  “Charles!” cried Ginny Darrish to her husband less than an hour later, “I do wish you’d let me call the exterminator! These wasps get bigger every year—I’m surprised you don’t give ’em names!” Ginny closed the door behind her. “You know why I’m here,” she said then in a low and accusing voice.

  “About Jerry and Evelyn,” her husband said, without discernible emotion.

  Ginny nodded: “Charles, what did you do to them? Not ten minutes ago Evelyn was out at the school, all but accusing me of having put my finger to the knots that tied poor Margaret to her bicycle!”

  Charles nodded, raising his eyebrows and shutting his eyes altogether. “She was already real upset when she came in here, and I know I told you I’d take her on, but Ginny, I cain’t afford to represent a crazy woman—” “Evelyn Larkin is not crazy, and besides, you wouldn’t have had to do anything! It’s just to reassure her till she comes out of this—that’s all.”

  “I wouldn’t have to do a blessed thing,” said Charles, “except to apologize to half the town every other day, and try to explain why Evelyn Larkin had accused them of murder, and I don’t know what all else. It would be all right if I could count on her just staying out at the farm, and keeping quiet in the bed, but I cain’t count on that, Ginny, You saw how she was, just itching to get her nails into Nathan Redfield’s neck. She accused me of being in on it too. I cain’t just up and represent somebody who’s not in control. When they got here—they were sitting in the waiting room when I got back from having a plate of catfish at the White Horse—I was all ready to sign her on, but she got to talking, and I was looking at poor old Jerry out of the comer of my eye, how he was so red and sweaty, and I felt so sorry for him I didn’t, know what to do! And Evelyn went on and wouldn’t stop going on about Nathan, and by the time I finally got her out of here, she had the whole town behind bars, and that was including you and me and Ted Hale. She had dragged poor Margaret up out of her grave, and stuck Nathan Redfield down there in her place.”

  Ginny patted her powdered cheeks lightly in thought. “She’s upset, Charles, and I just cain’t say that I blame her.”

  “Sure! And she’s got a right to be, but she ought to leave this to Ted Hale. Besides,” he whispered, and leaned forward, toppling a sheaf of dusty papers in his wife’s direction: “You know and I know that Ted is not gone find anybody to put this on. Nobody’s gone come forward saying he murdered Margaret Larkin, nobody’s gone come forward and say that he was the one who got a fourteen-year-old girl pregnant. You think I want to look like a fool, representing a crazy woman?”

  Ginny nodded, defeated. “I just feel so sorry for her...”

  “So do I,” said Charles energetically.

  “And I feel bad that she’s just gone be disappointed again, if she talks to that lawyer in Pensacola.”

  “What lawyer?” demanded Charles. His eyes opened wide for half a second.

  “Well, after she got through blessing me out, she went in to see Warren Perry, and told him the same story, about how you wouldn’t take her on. And Warren told her about this lawyer in Pensacola. This lawyer is Warren’s mama’s cousin, and he lives right on Palafox, and Evelyn made Warren go in the teachers’ lounge and call the man up, and now Evelyn and Jerry are going down there tonight to see him. Well, when Warren told me that, I hit the ceiling! I sent Warren out to the farm to call it off, to make up some excuse, because if Evelyn talks to that man, she’s just gone get upset again. Of course he's not gone take her on either. She ought not be making that trip down to Pensacola, just to be disappointed all over again.”

  Charles nodded thoughtfully. “You’re right,” he said: “I let her down easy, but you get some lawyer from Pensacola, you just don’t know what he’s gone say to her. What was his name—the lawyer in Pensacola, I mean?

  “I don’t know,” said Ginny, looking up: “Why? What does it matter?”

  “It doesn’t—I just—”

  “You know what else?” cried Ginny, interrupting her husband. “Evelyn told Warren that Ted Hale suspected—”

  The telephone rang, and Ginny broke off.

  “Hello?” said Charles, and after a moment, he handed the receiver across the desk to his wife. “It's Warren,” he said.

  Ginny took the receiver: “Warren, where are you?” she cried.

  “I’m at home. I—”

  “Warren, hold the phone up to your mouth. I can hardly hear you speak. Did you find Evelyn and Jerry? D’you talk her out of it?”

  “No. When I got out to the farm, they had already left. A couple of little boys were out in the patch, and they told me that Jerry and Miz Larkin went to put flowers on Margaret’s grave and then they were going to Pensacola.”

  “Well, why didn’t you go to the cemetery then, and try to stop them?”

  “I did. They left a nice little pot of yellow zinnias on the grave, but they had already left. I thought about following them to Pensacola, but I didn’t know where Jerry was going with the berries. It wouldn’t have done me any good.”

  “Why don’t you call your mama’s cousin, that lawyer you sent them to? You told me his name and I forgot it.”

  “What for? That wouldn’t serve, Ginny. You don’t want him to turn ’em away at the door. He’ll listen to Miz Larkin, and maybe he can do some good talking to her, because he’s not from Babylon. Maybe she’ll listen to him.”

  “Maybe,” said Ginny doubtfully. “What was his name?”

  “Henry Harp.”

  “Henry Harp,” Ginny repeated the name carefully, and her husband wrote it down. “Warren,” Ginny went on, “are you gone be home this afternoon, just in case I need you?”

  “I’ll be here. I was supposed to take the car up to Atmore but I’ve decided to put that off for a while.”

  “Bye then. I'm just sorry all this happened,” she added, and hung up the phone.

  “This is a bad business,” said Ginny to her husband, “and I don’t rightly see how any good is going to come out of it.” She stared at Charles across the desk for a few moments. “Charles, listen,” she said, “you don’t think that Nathan had anything to do with this, do you? Margaret’s death, I mean.”

  Charles covered his closed eyes with his hand. “No, of course not, he didn’t any more murder Margaret than Warren did. And Warren Perry wouldn’t tear the wings off a butterfly.”

  “Who you suppose did it?”

  He splayed his hands, and looked away. “Who knows? I don’t imagine we’ll ever know. I suppose we'll be lucky enough if it doesn’t happen to any other young girl out there on that bridge.”

  “I wouldn’t like to think that Nathan had anything to do with it. I don’t care anything for him, heaven knows, but he’s sort of family, and it doesn’t do to have family in the pen, especially with you being a lawyer and all.”

  “No,” said Charles, “it wouldn’t do this practice any good if Nathan Redfield went to the pen for murdering Margaret Larkin. And she was one of his customers, too.”

  It was past three when Charles Darrish at last persuaded his wife to leave, and at that, he had to bribe her with two twenties for a new dress.

  Chapter 24

  After Ginny Darrish had talked to her husband on Wednesday morning, warning him that Evelyn Larkin and Jerry would be coming by his office, the lawyer had met Nathan Redfield at a restaurant on the Pensacola highway. Nathan’s invitation had come as a surprise to the lawyer, for on most occasions the banker could barely be brought to speak five consecutive words to Charles Darrish. Darrish had accepted as much out of curiosity as anything else.

  There Nathan talked to the lawyer, until recently estranged, not of the death of Margaret Larkin, but rather of the land that Evelyn Larkin owned, stretching along the bank of the Styx. Nathan confided to the lawyer that the old woman was far behind on her payments on the subs
tantial bank loan, and would doubtless lose the farm within the next couple of years. This would be a matter of no consequence, smiled Nathan, except that it appeared likely that a great pool of oil underlay the whole of the property. Nathan said that he had some time ago decided that Evelyn Larkin and her grandson ought to be made to relinquish that land before the representative of Texaco showed up in Babylon, waving his checkbook.

  “Charles, listen,” said Nathan earnestly: “I’ve been having dealings with those oil people for the past year, because they’ve been after Daddy to let ’em drill some test rigs on the land that we own between the house and the Perdido, but Daddy’s holding ’em off, just to spite me. I think they’re getting put off about that, and they don’t want to put up with Daddy any more, and it’s starting to look like we’re gone get passed by because Daddy’s being so stubborn about it. And I cain’t talk to him, he won’t listen to me on something like this, and if I was to try to talk to him, it’d only make things worse. Now I was down there in Mobile having supper with two of these men, and they were staying at the Government House, and they took me up to their room for a couple of drinks, and they had all these maps spread out on the bed, and I think I saw a couple of ’em that I wasn’t supposed to see, ’cause I saw where they had marked the land that’s all along the Styx as the most likely place for oil. Now we own gosh knows how many thousand acres between the house and the Perdido, but they’re actually more interested in the land that’s right along the Styx, and on the other side. Different kind of rock formation or something, I guess.”

  “They tell you that?” said Darrish suspiciously.

  “Not exactly. But they asked me who owned that land up there, all that land north of town and on this side of the Alabama line. I said most of it belonged to some man up in Boston who’s not ever down here, and that the rest of it belonged to the Larkins. Then they asked who the Larkins were, and I knew something was up.”