You Live Once

by John D. MacDonald

  A half hour later and two-thirds of the way through the volume, I found it. I read it carefully. It had warranted quite a splash in the paper.

  I read it and read the follow-up stories in subsequent editions. The last little flicker was a page eight squib telling about the transfer of Mrs. Rolph Olan from a local hospital to a private mental institution in accordance with a court order.

  I sat back and pulled the peanut-can ash tray closer and lighted a cigarette. It was not a pretty story. Mary Olan, on an October Wednesday, had been picked up at two-thirty at the private elementary school she attended by the Olan chauffeur driving Mrs. Olan’s car. The little girl had run into the house. She had seen her father’s car in the drive and was anxious to see him. Her baby brother was having his nap. The cook and maid had Wednesday afternoons off. She went in the front door. Her mother, Nadine Pryor Olan, was standing on the bottom stair of the main staircase. She held a bloody kitchen knife in her hand. Her husband was on his back on the floor in front of her, stabbed through the heart and quite dead. Nadine Olan was in a state of severe shock, unable to respond to questions.

  It was established—though the paper was most coy about this—that Rolph Olan had led an active extramarital life and that this had been a cause of discord between them. Except for the sleeping child, they had been alone in the house. They were unable to establish why Mr. Rolph Olan had come home in the middle of the day. He had received a phone call at his office shortly before he left and it was believed that it was his wife who had called him home, though this could not be proved. He had a habit of answering his own phone, perhaps due to his concurrent intrigues.

  At first Nadine Olan, whose health had always been delicate, had responded to treatment. She claimed that she had heard a fall shortly after she had heard her husband’s car drive in. She said she had been resting in her bedroom next to the nursery. She had thought little of it, had called to her husband, and then begun to worry when he didn’t answer. She had gone down and found him and she guessed she had instinctively pulled the knife from his chest. The next thing she knew, her daughter had come running in and had started to scream.

  She had been quite calm for a few days and then, perhaps as she began to realize that everyone was quite certain she had killed him, her mind failed quickly. I guessed that it could have been due to her own uncertainty as to whether or not she had killed him. Faced with such an insoluble problem, a retreat into unreality would not be inexplicable, particularly in the case of an emotional, sensitive, unhappy woman.

  During Mrs. Olan’s period of relative calmness, the paper speculated about two facts which seemed to spoil the picture of guilt. One man, who knew Rolph Olan by sight, was almost willing to swear that he had seen another man riding homeward with Mr. Olan that afternoon. And a neighbor woman reported that on that same afternoon a man had cut across her grounds and could have been coming from the Olan residence.

  But when Mrs. Olan’s mind went, before she moved back into the silent darkness where she could not be reached, she made a confession of sorts. Portions of it were reprinted in the paper. It was wildly incoherent. It spoke of angels of death and the vengeance of the Lord. It spoke of sin and retribution. Her obvious insanity put a halt to further speculations about her innocence.

  During the days immediately following the murder, Mr. Willis Pryor, brother of the accused woman, spent countless hours by her side, even watching over her during the night, and was tireless in proclaiming her innocence. He wrote a letter to the paper criticizing the inertia of the police. After Nadine Olan’s collapse and the medical verdict that the prognosis was unfavorable, Willis Pryor ceased his efforts in her behalf, withdrew from many community activities and resigned from the boards of several local corporations.

  I sifted over what I had. It wasn’t much. It was certainly less than Dodd Raymond had. He had known enough to kill him. This was his town; he’d know little things that hadn’t been in the paper. He had perhaps used the paper to confirm his memories. And he had known Mary Olan well. She would have talked to him about such things, though not to me.

  All I had was a hunch. A hunch about the evil of righteousness.

  I took Toni out to dinner that Saturday evening. I guess I was poor company. I would join our group of two for a while and be fine. And then I would drift away again. Toni was aware of it, and she was half amused, half hurt. I did as well as I could, returned her to my apartment and holed up at the hotel. I phoned her after I was in bed with the light out. I could picture her sitting by my phone. She said she was wearing another pair of those delightfully diaphanous pajamas, and that she too was in darkness.

  We said the things you would expect to be said under such circumstances and it was all very very fine indeed.

  Two hours later, nightmare yanked me out of dreams. I felt as exposed and afraid and naked as if I had been flayed. The object of fear was gone; I couldn’t remember it. I could only remember running in slow motion with something coming after me that moved faster and faster.

  The Pryor farm was, in its own way, as much a show-place as the house. Fat black cattle grazed on juicy grasses behind bone white fences. The aluminum roofs of the cattle barns blazed in the Sunday morning sun. I slowed down to watch a pack of horses running like hell. No reason. They felt good. It was that kind of a morning. Two big fieldstone posts marked off the entrance. The gravel road led straight from the entrance to the tenant house. Beyond the house, on the gentle slope of a hill, were the two cottages where the Pryors stayed when they stayed over at the farm. The cluster of barns and silos was behind the tenant house.

  I ignored the severe private signs and drove on in and parked by the tenant house. A new red tractor stood in rigid angular dignity, like a strange Martian insect.

  John Fidd came around from behind the tenant house and looked at me with disgust. “Yar?” he said.

  “Came back down from the lake, eh?”

  “No horses and no boats up there this summer. On account of Miss Mary. And that no good Yeagger. Good thing. I got too much to do here without going up there and being a stable boy. I got to watch the hands here.”

  “I’d like to see the place where they found Mr. Raymond yesterday morning.”

  John Fidd spat with emphasis. “Wouldn’t be anybody driving around the place at night if I was here. I can’t show you now. Too busy.”

  “How do I find it?”

  “You don’t,” he said.

  That seemed to be that. He looked beyond me. A yellow jeep swung into the gravel road, rear wheels skidding dangerously. It was piloted by one of the Pryor girls.

  “Which one is that?” I asked.

  “That there is Miss Skeeter, the oldest. Best of the lot, too, if anybody should want to ask me.”

  She stopped beside my car and jumped out of the jeep. She wore beat-up khaki riding pants, a yellow sports shirt. Her brown hair had paler sun streaks. She looked as round, brown, healthy and uncomplicated as a young koala bear. “Hi, John. Hello, Mr. Sewell. John, I thought I’d give Simpy a run.”

  “You’re out early, Miss Skeeter.”

  “I went to church early. The rest were about ready to go by the time I got back to change. Dad will probably bring the rest of them out later on.”

  “Mr. Sewell here was wanting to see where that fella hanged himself. I don’t have the time right now to take him over there.”

  She looked at me dubiously. “If you really want to see it, I’ll show you where it is. Wait until I saddle up and then you can follow me in the jeep. Or maybe you’d like to ride too?”

  “No thanks. The jeep will be fine.”

  She trotted off toward the barns. I leaned against the jeep. Fidd went off. In about five minutes she came out on a big roan that was all stallion and half as high as a house. He felt like going sideways. She yanked some sense into him, touched him with a little crop and cantered up to the jeep.

  “Once we get beyond that fence line there we’ll cut across country. Better put it
in four wheel drive. Do you know how?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t follow Simpy too close. He gets nervous.”

  She spun him and lifted him into a full run. There wasn’t any danger of my getting too close. I had enough trouble keeping him in sight. Far ahead of me she cut over toward a dirt road and swung to the ground. The far side of the road was lined with trees. I drove up and stopped and got out.

  “This is the tree and that’s the limb there. See, he had the car right about here, so that the limb was about ten feet above the roof of the car and about five feet behind it. It was easy to throw the rope over the limb.”

  “I wonder why he came out here?”

  “They say he used to come out here a lot years ago. They used to ride out here. He didn’t really date Mary then. She was too young I guess.”

  Simpy cropped grass steadily. Skeeter seemed anxious to get on him and be off. I wanted to get her talking, and I didn’t know exactly how to go about it.

  “I guess they had to get a ladder to cut him down.”

  “I guess so.”

  “How do you feel about it, Skeeter?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “About Mary and Dodd Raymond.”

  “I didn’t know him very well. Just to say hello to. I’m certainly not sorry he’s dead, Mr. Sewell. Everything seems so dull without Mary. She was wonderful. We loved her, my sisters and I. It was a terrible thing to do.”

  “I guess it was, all right.”

  “Simpy wants his run. You can leave the jeep back by the house.”

  “How old are you, Skeeter?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “The last time I saw you was a week ago today.”

  Her eyes seemed to change to a paler color. “I know. When you came up to the lake after throwing Mary’s body out in the bushes, acting up there like nothing had happened. I remember it very well, Mr. Sewell.”

  “That was a mistake. It was bad judgment. I lost my head.”

  “You looked calm enough up at the lake.”

  “Skeeter, I was scared to death. Honestly.”

  She weighed that carefully. “I guess maybe you had every right to be. But you did a bad thing.”

  “I know that. I had that impressed on me … forcibly.”

  “She was so alive.”

  “I know.” I braced myself carefully, smiled and said, “A little too lively for her Uncle Willy, I guess.”

  “I don’t think I know what you mean,” she said with young dignity, slamming the family gates.

  “From things she told me, I gathered that your father didn’t care much for the way she led her life.”

  “Mary told you that?”

  “We talked a lot. Remember, I knew her pretty well, Skeeter.”

  “Have you got a cigarette? I’m not allowed to smoke, so I can’t carry them.”

  I gave her a cigarette, lighted hers and my own. She hitched her tight pants onto the flat surface of the front fender of the jeep. “She just about drove Daddy crazy. He’s awfully strict with us. He tried to be the same way with Mary, but it didn’t work because she was of age and had her own money. There wasn’t any way he could punish her or restrict her the way he does us.

  “At Christmastime Daddy caught Jigger kissing a boy. Just kissing a boy! You’d think she was living in sin or something. Jigger didn’t get any allowance and she couldn’t have a date or even go to the movies for six whole weeks. After dinner she had to go right to her room and study until bedtime. And he restricted Dusty and me for two weeks because he’d caught Jigger. Honestly!”

  “They must have fought then?”

  “If you can call it fighting. Daddy was either yelling at her or not speaking to her. She never seemed to get mad. She acted as if it was some kind of a joke. I couldn’t ever figure out why she didn’t go and live alone where she could do as she pleased and Daddy wouldn’t know anything about it. That’s what I would have done. That’s what I will do, the minute I’m old enough. It sometimes seemed to me that she stayed with us just to needle Daddy. I think there was some legal reason why he had to provide a home for her for as long as she wanted it.”

  “She needled him?”

  “I don’t know exactly how she’d do it, but she could sure raise hell with him. When he’d be having one of his bad spells over something she had done, or something he thought she’d done, she would find a chance to say something to him. She’d never let any of the rest of us hear what she said. It must have really been something, though. Sometimes Daddy would go and walk for hours after that happened. Or lock himself in his study and we could hear him in there reading the Bible out loud. You know I’ve always thought she … she told him about … men.”

  She was blushing under her tan. “What?” I said.

  “About men. Because Daddy has told me, gosh, dozens of times, not to let Mary talk dirty to me, and come and tell him right away if she did. She never did, of course. But that’s the way I think she must have talked to him. Daddy is strong and he has a terrible temper sometimes. Like the time he broke Dusty’s arm when …” She stopped abruptly. “That’s none of your business. I shouldn’t have said it.”

  “You’ve said most of it. Maybe it would sound better if you explained it.”

  “Actually she fell.”

  “Pushed?”

  “Well, yes. But he didn’t mean to break her arm. I guess I better tell you. I still don’t understand it. It was two years ago. Mary had come home from a trip. It was a warm day in early October and we went up to the lake, the six of us. I guess Dusty thought Daddy and Mother were up at the big house. Jigger and I were still in the water. Mary had gone to the girl’s shower room over the boat house. Dusty decided to sneak up into the men’s bunk room and look at some cartoons on the wall up there. We’re not supposed to look at them or even know they’re there. They aren’t really dirty, just kind of silly.”

  “I’ve seen them.”

  “Dusty sneaked up and Daddy was up there at the window with a pair of binoculars looking over toward the girls’ bunk room. He got angry and chased Dusty down the stairs and pushed her. She fell and broke her arm. She didn’t tell us about the binoculars until later. He could have been trying to see Mary get dressed, but that doesn’t make much sense. He’d hate anything like that. I’ve just never been able to figure out what he was doing. I even asked Mary about it one time. She looked startled and then she laughed and laughed. Tears ran down her cheeks she laughed so hard. She wouldn’t tell me what was so funny. At dinner that night she looked at Daddy and started laughing all over again. He got so mad he couldn’t eat. He left the table.”

  I had almost all of it. Nearly everything I needed. The pattern was all too clear. I looked at the snub-nosed healthy girl and pitied her. But maybe she and her sisters would have the strength they would need. Maybe the blood of Myrna was strong enough, clear enough, sane enough. Yet probably nothing would ever keep this girl from hating me.

  “It must be pretty tough on your father, with what happened to his sister, and now what’s happened to his niece. I understand your father and his sister were very close.”

  “They were only a year apart. They were inseparable when they were young. I think he nearly died when they had to send her away. I was just a baby, of course. Mother still talks about how sick he was.”

  “He looks pretty husky now.”

  “Oh yes. He’s very healthy for a man his age. Do you know what he did last fall? All by himself, with an axe, a handsaw, a sledge and wedges, he cut down trees and sawed them up and split over fourteen cords of hardwood. There was so much more than we needed that John Fidd sold six cords in town for twelve dollars a cord.”

  “He works out here a lot, I guess.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  I braced myself again and made it casual. “I suppose he was working here the last time I saw you up at the lake. Was your mother along?”

  “Let me think. Yes, she was up there with us but went back early wh
en Daddy phoned about Mary. Daddy doesn’t like us to go up alone, even though Mrs. Johannssen and Ruth are there. Mother isn’t as strict with us. Daddy stayed in town. I don’t know whether he stayed home or out here. Maybe here.”

  “And nobody went up this weekend.”

  “No, we all stayed in town.”

  “Did your father stay out here Friday night?”

  “No. He was out here on Friday, but he came home … why are you asking me that?”

  “Just making conversation, I guess.”

  She was looking dubious again. I made my smile as bland as possible. “You certainly stick to that horse nicely. He’d scare me.”

  She slid off the fender. “He’s an old lamb. He’s a honey pie, old Simpy is.”

  She caught him, mounted, waved and rode off. His hooves drummed the May earth. I looked at the tree. Dodd Raymond had hung there, night dew on his shoulders, on the wavy hair, two hundred pounds at the end of a tow rope, while dawn came and the birds awakened.

  I drove the jeep back the way I had come, following my tire tracks in the pasture grass.

  As Toni would say, it was none of my business. But you can’t leave a thing like that alone. Not when you’re nearly positive.

  I waited a full hour before they arrived—Uncle Willy, Aunt Myrna and the other two girls. Skeeter came cantering back to the barn just as their car drove in. The girls got out, gave me a quick unconcerned glance and raced toward the barn. Willy halted them with one short bark. They came back meekly, took the two baskets of food and carried them toward one of the cottages. Myrna Pryor stared at me and followed the girls.

  Willy came over toward me. His polished boots gleamed black in the sun. His riding pants were crisp and fresh. His white shirt was unbuttoned, the tails knotted at the waist à la Mexican beach. His hair was almost impossibly white against the tan of him. He was a Hemingway, fifty, taut as drums, resilient, proud of his body.

  “Hello, Sewell. Something I can do for you?”

  The look of defeat he had worn in the jail cell was entirely gone. His eyes were clear, keen.