Bachelor's Puzzle

by Judith Pella

  “And it wasn’t there,” finished Zack. “It’s true. I never put it into the bank.” He was prepared to take his medicine. “You may as well know the truth, Calvin.I didn’t steal the money.I never used it. I kept it only for an emergency. But it got burned up in the fire. The money is gone.”

  “But, William—”

  “Let me finish.” Zack pushed ahead, anxious to have it all out before he lost his nerve and dug in his heels. “I am not WilliamL ocklin. He died. I found him on the trail where he’d been thrown from his horse and injured badly. I had nothing to do with his death,I swear that to you.I tried to help him, but he was hurt too badly.I was on the run and needed a place to hide out for a while. TakingL ocklin’s identity seemed to be the answer.I didn’t think it would hurt anyone.”

  Taking a few moments to absorb all this, Calvin finally asked, “You are wanted by the law?”

  “No, I am not. I owed money to a hoodlum in Portland. A fellow named Cutter.” Zack added this last to give his confession veracity. “There was a scuffle, and I accidentally shot one of his friends. Sinclair was his name. You must believe me—I am not wanted by the law. But the hoodlum was after me for killing his friend. He would have killed me if he had found me.”

  Calvin’s disappointed sigh and his look, as much rueful as sorrowful, was enough to make Zack wish he was wanted by the law, could turn himself in and go to jail as punishment for his crimes. If Calvin was wondering what punishment to mete out, his look of disappointment, in itself, was worse than prison.

  “All this time you lied to us, to the church,” Calvin said. “You made a mockery of all we believe in.”

  “That was never my intent!” But Zack knew that had been the inevitable result. “I just . . . I didn’t mean . . .” Any defense was weak, even if he could make one or get it past the lump of gall in his throat.

  “You best leave, William, or whoever you are,” Calvin said with great regret.

  “That’s what I was doing now.I was leaving. I finally realized it had gone too far.I wanted to confess to you. So many times I tried but just didn’t have the courage. I didn’t want you folks to hate me.”

  Calvin appeared to ruminate on that, no doubt questioning how coincidental it sounded that Zack happened to be leaving at just the moment he was found out.

  “Go, then,” Calvin said, “and don’t ever show your face around here again.”

  Zack started to spur his horse forward but stopped. “Calvin, I’m sorry.”

  Calvin made no response, and Zack didn’t wait for one. He rode off at a hurried trot.

  TWENTY - EIGHT

  News of the fake minister spread quickly though Maintown. After the encounter with William on the road, Calvin had rode into his yard, only to find a half dozen of the worst gossips in town right there. He saw no reason to keep quiet what William had just confessed. Why should he? Besides, he was angry, an emotion rare to him but now so strong he wanted the world to know about the evil man who had hoodwinked an entire community.

  As expected, telling six ladies was like lighting six fuses that ignited the entire church and the town. The townsmen quickly organized a meeting that very evening at the schoolhouse. Everyone even remotely related to the church showed up.

  Calvin thought the group resembled a lynch mob rather than a congregation of Christians.If the fake William L ocklin had been there, truly only God could have spared his life. Come to think of it, maybe God wouldn’t have, either.

  The man had scorned God, indeed mocked God, by speaking His words in a perfidious manner.

  Several of the men present rebuked Calvin, as well.

  “You let him go?” Nathan Parker demanded. “You let him just ride away?”

  “How could you be so foolish?” Hal Fergus railed.

  Part of Calvin did regret what he had done. But he hadn’t had much of a choice. He’d had no weapon with which to compel the man to stay. His action had likely spared that miscreant a tar and feathering. Calvin was angry, but he knew his anger derived mostly from the fact that he had genuinely cared for the lad. He felt as if this William imposter had wronged him personally. He had let him go because he feared his own anger, as well as the anger of the whole town.If they acted on that anger, he feared it would wound the already beset town beyond healing. He thought it best if the “minister” just disappeared and the town’s ire dissipated on its own.

  The upshot of the meeting was that Nathan Parker would go into St. Helens and speak with the sheriff to see if criminal charges could be brought against “Locklin.”I t seemed a toothless gesture to Calvin, since their man no doubt was long gone by now. But no one listened to his voice of reason.

  Parker went into town the very next morning. What he discovered and later reported to Calvin was that the sheriff could find nothing criminal in “Locklin’s” actions, especially since he had performed no marriages. However, when Parker mentioned the stolen—his interpretation of Calvin’s explanation—church money, the sheriff was pleased to say that now he had a criminal case. Parker pressed charges. The sheriff said he would send out a bulletin bearing a very good likeness of “Locklin,” thanks to Parker’s detailed description. These bulletins went as far as Astoria to the west and Portland to the east.

  Maggie was sickened by all that had happened. She felt it was her fault.If she hadn’t pushed “William” into a corner as she had, he might have gone on forever as the town minister. That’s what she wanted more than anything—for things to go on as they were. She didn’t care that he was a fake minister. She had kind of guessed that anyway when she had found the questionable things in his trunk. She didn’t feel like the rest of the town did, that she had been deceived. She was glad he wasn’t a minister.

  She was especially upset when she learned that criminal charges had been made against him and he could go to jail for what he had done. Down deep, she didn’t feel he was the criminal or evil sort many in Maintown were now making him out to be.

  She tried to defend him to her parents.

  “Dad, when you saw William on the road that day,” she said one evening as the family was gathering for dinner, “I am sure he really was leaving town like he told you.”

  “What do you know of this, Maggie?” Dad asked.

  Maybe if she told the truth, they would not think so badly of him and perhaps even drop those charges. He shouldn’t go to jail.

  “One thing I know,” she replied, “is that what he said about the money is true. I saw it in his room—”

  “What were you doing in his room?” demanded Mama. All that had transpired had been quite upsetting to her. She had liked “William,” too, and had been the most vocal promoter of getting him married off. She well knew that given a little more time, this . . . fraud would have surely married one of their local girls, and she would have felt it was, in large part, her fault.

  “I went to get his suit for you to alter,” Maggie said defensively. She should have sensed her danger and stopped then, but she never did know when to stop. “He had the money tucked into the bottom of his trunk like he had no intention of using it.”

  “And you never said anything about this?” Dad asked.

  “I . . . uh . . . well,I figured there was a good reason for it,” she stumbled on. “Maybe he didn’t trust banks or something. But the important thing is that he didn’t use the money. I t did burn up in the fire.”

  “Why are you defending him?” Dad asked.I t was a question, but Maggie sensed there was hope behind it. Dad had liked “William” and maybe was looking for a way to spare him the worst punishment for what he had done.

  “I really don’t believe he meant to hurt anyone. Why else would he leave immediately after I proposed to him?”

  “You what!” screeched Mama.

  Maggie blinked. What had she just said? She hadn’t intended on telling that much of the truth! But maybe it would make them finally understand. “Well,I did. I asked him to marry me, and he turned me down. A few minutes later he met Dad an
d said he was leaving town. He knew it had gone too far. He was trying to spare me.”

  “What had gone too far?” Dad asked sharply.I t seemed like his anger was suddenly ignited once more. “Did he do something to encourage you?”

  “No, Dad!” She decided this was not the time to mention the kiss. “I just didn’t want any of the other girls to get him. I thought everyone would finally take me seriously if I was married. And, well, William and I had become friends.”

  “I don’t know what to say.” Dad sighed.

  But Mama did know exactly what to say. “Margaret Edith, you better be telling the truth! And if you are telling the truth, you should be ashamed of yourself! Your behavior only proves how immature you are. I can almost sympathize with the reverend.”

  “I know he didn’t mean no harm!” Maggie insisted.

  “I think she’s right,” Ellie put in.

  All heads swung in her direction. Up until now Maggie had been surprised by Ellie’s response to all that had happened. She had thought her sister, who could be self-righteous at times, would speak loudly against William’s fraud.I nstead, she had been very quiet since the revelation. She had not talked at all to Maggie about it. Maggie had known it was because her sister was mad at her. Their interactions of late had been quite chilly. But now, she too was defending William?

  “I don’t believe he was a truly bad person,” Ellie went on.

  “I talked to him often, and I don’t believe everything he said was a lie. Now thinking of some of our conversations,I believe he regretted what he was doing. He just got caught up in the masquerade and couldn’t find his way out.”

  “It seems you girls knew him better than I thought,” Dad said. “You didn’t propose to him, too, did you, Ellie?”

  “No, Daddy.” She shook her head. Her lip was trembling and moisture filled her eyes. “I just told him I loved him.” Tears spilled from her eyes.

  “Oh my!” Mama groaned, then fanning herself with a hand, she sank down onto one of the kitchen chairs. Maggie had never seen her mother attacked by the vapors, but the woman now alternately turned pale and then flushed Turkey red.

  Dad looked at Mama. And Maggie knew the full measure of her father when he remained silent. He could so easily have said to his wife, I told you so!

  Her voice shaky with emotion, Ellie added, “Dad,I believe that at the end, God was convicting Zack of his mistakes.”

  “Then,” Dad said, “we will let God deal with him. Zack? You say his name is Zack?”

  “I don’t know. He once asked me to call him that.I thought it was a jest. But maybe it was just getting harder and harder for him to keep up the false identity.”

  “Dad, you say God will deal with . . . him, with Zack,” Maggie said, “but there are still those charges against him.”

  “I cannot change that,” he said. “The money is missing, and the majority of church members want legal justice.”

  “Then he truly is in God’s hands,” Ellie said with a note of hopefulness in her voice.

  Somehow Mama managed to get dinner on the table, and everyone tried to eat, but it was an unusually silent meal, and the silence extended for the rest of the evening. Maggie wished she had Georgie’s homework to do as a distraction, but with school out now there was no arithmetic. She played a couple games of checkers with Georgie but received little joy from beating him and finally quit. Mama and Ellie sewed by the light of the kerosene lamp, and Dad read his seed catalog. Everyone seemed relieved when Dad finally rose, stretched, and announced it was time for bed. Maggie would have gone upstairs earlier, but she hadn’t relished the idea of being alone.

  Georgie lingered in Maggie and Ellie’s room for a few minutes. “You sure the reverend wasn’t lying ’bout everything?” he asked.

  “We’ll never know,” Ellie said.

  “But you said—”

  “I was speaking mostly of his heart, Georgie,” Ellie explained. “I suppose he had to keep telling lies to cover up other lies.”

  “But lying is wrong,” Georgie said, perplexed. “It’s breaking a commandment and all. How can his heart be right if he’s breaking commandments?”

  “We all make mistakes, Georgie.I t doesn’t mean we are evil in our hearts.”

  Maggie added, “I’ve told lies, Georgie. Do you think I’m’m evil?”

  “No,I guess not.” But he punctuated his words with an impish grin. “Still,” he went on more earnestly, “I hope you’re right ’cause I don’t want to think I liked an evil person. When we was sharing my room, we talked some. I tried to ask him about the Bible ’cause I thought that’s what a minister would want, but he’d always change the subject, and we talked about more common stuff, like problems at school and how I didn’t want to finish school ’cause it seemed useless. He told me I should finish. I t would make my parents proud. I asked him if I should kiss Cissy Fergus.”

  “What did he say to that?” Maggie asked.

  “He said to never kiss a girl unless she wanted to be kissed.

  I asked him how to know if she wanted to, and he said the best way was to ask her. But he said if you have to ask, then she probably don’t.”

  “Georgie,” Ellie said, “it is possible that the only time Zack wasn’t himself was when he was in the pulpit or doing ministerial things.”

  “Do you think he was a Christian?” Georgie asked.

  “That is not for us to judge.”

  A few minutes later Georgie reluctantly left.I t had surprised Maggie that he had become friends with Zack, too.

  Zack . . . she liked that name better than William. She wondered what his last name was.

  When she and Ellie were under their covers and the lamp was out, Maggie wasn’t ready for sleep. She knew she must finally talk to her sister about their fake minister.

  “Ellie, do you really love him?”

  Ellie didn’t answer for a long time. Maybe she wouldn’t. She might be upset that Maggie had proposed marriage to him.

  Finally Ellie responded. “I told him I loved him. But who did I love?I f he wasn’t real, how could my love be real?” Her voice was thin and shaky.I t seemed as if she had been holding in her emotions about this for a long time, but now that the truth about her feelings was out, she was unable to control them.

  “Maybe you loved what you saw in his heart, the part that was real.”

  “I’m awfully confused,” Ellie admitted. “It is hard to quit loving once you start. But I’m’m furious, too, that he lied to us. How can you be so mad at someone and still in love?”

  “Why did you defend him, Ellie?”

  “Because I don’t think I could love someone who was evil.” After a long pause she went on, “And you, Mags? What about your love? You were ready to marry him.”

  “I never said I loved him.”

  “You didn’t?”

  Now Maggie was thoughtfully silent. She had told Zack she loved him. But Mama was right. She was too immature to know anything about love. When he left her that day behind the barn, she had never been so relieved. She’d cried, yes, but most of those tears had been from humiliation. What would she have done if he had accepted her proposal? She’d be engaged now and planning a wedding, and in six months she’d be . . . married! No girl had ever been happier to see a man run.

  “No, I didn’t,” Maggie answered. “And I am pretty certain he didn’t love me either, even after I kissed him.”

  “You kissed him?”

  “I just wanted to see what it would be like.”

  “I kissed him, too,” Ellie confessed.

  Maggie laughed.

  “You’re not mad at me?” Ellie asked. “I wasn’t trying to steal him from you.”

  “Even if sometimes I thought you were,I know it ain’t true.I suppose if a man really loves a woman, another woman couldn’t steal him away.”

  “That makes me feel so much better.”

  With another chuckle, Maggie added, “But I do feel sorry for him, for William or Zack or Z
acchaeus or whatever. The poor fellow had enough on his hands trying to pretend to be a minister. We sure made it worse by throwing ourselves at him.”

  “Still, he did something very wrong in impersonating a minister,” Ellie said.

  “I hope he doesn’t go to jail.”

  “I hope he doesn’t, either. Maybe God won’t mind if I pray for him.”

  “I’ll pray for him, too,” Maggie said, and she did so right then and there, silently. She prayed he would repent of his sins and return to Maintown—not for her, though, but for the person who really did love him.

  Across the hall Ada was experiencing a rare bout of humility. She glanced over at her husband and didn’t know if he had fallen asleep yet. The lamp was out and in the moonlight flowing through the window she could only discern a vague lump beside her.

  “Calvin, are you awake?”

  There was a long pause, so she thought he must be asleep.

  Then he mumbled, “No.”

  “How can you sleep at a time like this—?” she began to rail and then realized this wasn’t the best way to begin an apology. “Calvin, I’ve’ve got to say something.I . . . well . . . I was . . . wrong.”

  This made the vague lump turn and sit upright. He looked at her with pure wonder.

  “Oh, stop that!” she said, chuckling quietly. “Well, I deserve it.I deserve to hear you say ‘I told you so.’ ”

  “I’m not going to say it, Ada.”

  “No. I want you to. Go ahead. Say it.”

  “Wouldn’t be right. Be like kicking you when you are down.”

  “Calvin! You say it right now! I mean it!” she demanded.

  Calvin smiled. She saw the twitch of his lips in the moonlight. “I told you so, Ada,” he deadpanned.

  “Humph!” she responded. “How could I know the man was a fake?” Pausing, she added with as much humility as she could manage, “Thank you, Calvin.”

  “You think Ellie was right about him?” he asked.

  “If not, then we are the biggest fools ever.” Thinking about it a moment, she added, “I don’t think he ever meant to play us for fools.”