The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter

by Sharyn McCrumb

  The sign on the window said Jewelry Store in flecked gold leaf. Maggie paused to look at a display of garnet rings—her birthstone—but Mark grabbed her elbow and ushered her into the store. "Good afternoon," he said to the shop's only inhabitant, an elderly man in a dark suit. Mark could sound quite affable when he cared to, which wasn't often. It was his public face, same as their father's.

  "What can I do for you good people?" the old man asked. His soft Southern voice invited their confidence.

  Maggie looked around her, at the silver tea sets, the trays of diamond engagement rings, and the case filled with gold watches. She wished that they were shopping. She would have liked a birthstone ring or tiny gold earrings studded with garnets. But Mark seldom 264

  went into a store except to grocery shop when they ran low on powdered milk or bread, and on those trips he went alone. Dad had been like that, too, treating the house as if it were a fortress.

  Mark had strolled up to the counter and placed his reeking pillowcase on the glass counter. The old man stepped back as the smell reached his nostrils. Mark smiled reassuringly. "We need some help," he said pleasantly. "There is a number carved in very tiny print, and we need someone with a strong magnifier to read it."

  "What is it?" asked the old man, dabbing at his face with a linen handkerchief. Beads of sweat had appeared at his temples.

  "It's a number carved on a tooth," said Mark. "Belonged to a spy. This is classified, you understand." He reached into the pillowcase and drew out the yellowed jawbone, now devoid of skin but still smelling of preservative. Maggie looked away.

  "Where'd you get this?" asked the jeweler, making no move to take it from Mark's outstretched hand.

  "Please. Read out the number for us. It's that tooth there." Mark pointed to a molar, shiny with a gold-tone filling.

  The man looked at Mark, and started to say something, but thought better of it. With a shrug he took the jawbone, and carried it back into the office where he did jewelry repair.

  Maggie touched Mark's elbow. "Suppose he reports this?"

  Mark smiled. "He doesn't know who we are. Besides, it's our family fortune we're trying to recover. Surely people can understand that. If not, we can buy them off."

  Maggie let her thoughts drift away from the conversation as she stared at the trays of rings in the glass-fronted counters. Perhaps Mark would let her buy one when he recovered the money from Switzerland. Mark was humming tunelessly. Every now and then he would lean forward to peer at the jeweler through the glass partition.

  Several minutes later, the old man came out, holding the jawbone in his handkerchief, his arm outstretched to distance himself from the stench. "I don't understand," he said, blinking up at Mark. "I've examined every one of these teeth. There's no number on any of them."

  "That's impossible," said Mark with a stubborn smile. "Did you use a strong magnifier when you looked at them?"

  "I'm telling you: there's nothing there." The jeweler glanced at the telephone. "May I have your names, please?"

  "No," said Mark. "We'll take our business elsewhere." He grasped Maggie by the elbow and hurried her out of the shop. When they reached the car, he sped away without even waiting to take the parking ticket off the windshield.

  It was going to be a long winter. The solstice was six weeks past, but Laura Bruce still couldn't see any appreciable lengthening of the

  days. Cloudy days seemed dark even at noon. She looked out the kitchen window at the gathering twilight that blurred the shapes in the yard until they became gray shadows ebbing into the dark. Surely time was passing, she thought, touching her swollen belly.

  She turned on the kitchen light to shut out the evening gloom. Time for a cup of tea, and perhaps a sandwich, not that she felt much like eating. She had been to the doctor in Johnson City again today. No change, he told her. He had measured for signs of dilation, listened for the heartbeat that wasn't there, and finally sent her away, counseling more patience. It wasn't time yet. He didn't look at her much during the appointment. She had become an embarrassment to him: the specter of failure and death among the happy mothers awaiting his care. He didn't ask how she was feeling, and she volunteered no information. All that mattered was when, and that he was unable to tell her. So she drove home in the pale winter sunlight, and thought a dozen times of aiming her car for the nearest tree. She didn't, though. Despair was a sin. She'd read that somewhere.

  Laura opened the refrigerator, and looked without favor at its contents: plastic cartons of cottage cheese, a package of hot dogs, and a bowl of homemade applesauce. She shut the door. Just a cup of tea, then. She didn't feel like going to the bother of cooking. After all, she wasn't eating for two. And not getting any exercise, either, she thought, forcing her mind away from the pain of recollection. As soon as 267

  some mild weather set in, she would go for walks, or perhaps do a bit of gardening, setting out early annuals for April color. Jane Arrowood could tell her what plants would thrive in early March. She must remember to ask.

  Meanwhile, there was television, and books from the limited supply of the Bookmobile. By default, because the library van contained little other than westerns and romances, she had discovered C. S. Lewis's A Grief Observed. She read it over and over, even renewing it, because she could not bear to part with it. Reading Lewis was like talking to someone who understood what she was feeling now. He spoke of the laziness of grief. Yes, that was true. She felt as if she had been moving in slow motion over the past few weeks. The slightest task required great effort, and the many small chores of living seemed altogether pointless. She fingered a limp strand of hair that fell across her forehead; she hadn't shampooed it for several nights, always telling herself that another day's postponement would make no difference.

  She followed his chronicle of the stages of bereavement, willing herself to move on to the next one, for she had to. Because no one could live where she was now, in such a spiritual twilight. So she reread Lewis, and took him at his word that there was an end to even the greatest pain. But it was hard to be brave in private.

  She still hadn't told Will. But that didn't count as being brave. It was just a confrontation that she was avoiding. She wrote to him every other day, as something to do, and she 268

  missed him so much. If Will had been home, she would have confided in him, and let him comfort her. But trusting her sorrow to pieces of paper would mean reliving it, and putting aside her own sorrow for Will's sake. She wasn't ready to do that. Grief is a form of selfishness. Had Lewis said that, or did she work it out for herself? Laura had become quite adept at penning cheerful, newsy letters that betrayed nothing of her own despair. Will has enough to trouble him, she told herself. He needn't be burdened with this, too, when there's nothing to be done for it. She had managed to outlive the first shock of the tragedy, first as a sleepwalker, and then with mindless activity. The bustle in the house the morning after death. She had scoured the house, tidied the closets, and finally, in the momentum of housecleaning, she had set about turning the nursery back into a guest room, taking down the dinosaur curtains, and packing away the baby things. All reminders were gone now, save just the one that she saw each time she looked in the mirror.

  The rumble of the kettle subsided, and a ribbon of steam sailed upward from the spout. Laura got a bag out of the canister, and put it into an earthenware mug. She glanced at the library book lying on the counter, and thought again about fixing a sandwich. She mustn't give in to the laziness of grief. Perhaps she ought to try to do some visiting.

  She had avoided the Ladies' Circle, with their relentless chatter about pregnancy. And Nora Bonesteel. Laura had not been back to the house 269

  on Ashe Mountain since she had learned of the baby's death. She had to work through her bitterness before she could face the old woman again. Did Nora Bonesteel know that the baby would die, and if so, why didn't she give Laura warning? Sometimes when Laura thought of Nora Bonesteel, she would become angry that this knowledge had been k
ept from her, and at other times, she would recall something else Nora had said. "I hardly ever get anything I'd set a store on knowing." So perhaps she hadn't known at all. And if she had received a premonition, what good would it have done to talk about it? It could only have given Laura added weeks of suffering. Laura had come to accept that, but the resentment lingered. She wouldn't go back to see Nora Bonesteel until she could work through her grief. And until she could deal with the well-meaning inanities of people who didn't understand about bereavement.

  That thought brought an image of Mark and Maggie Underhill into her mind. When Laura had been called to comfort them on the night of the murders, she hadn't understood about grief, either. She hadn't known what to say to them, or how to act in the presence of their tragedy. She had felt embarrassed and tongue-tied in the face of so much loss. She had thought they might not want strangers around, but perhaps they needed people, whether they knew it or not. Will would have sensed that. He would have tried to befriend them. She hadn't done a good job of ministering to them, she thought, and personal sorrow was no excuse. Laura 270

  hadn't seen the Underhills since Christmas. She had not telephoned them or driven out to see how they were. Mark and Maggie had not tried to contact her, either. Grief is lazy; grief makes us shy. We want people around, she thought, but we don't want to make the effort to talk to them. I have been selfish, Laura told herself. I lost one person; they lost four. Now I can tell them that I truly do understand their loss. In a few days she would go and see about them. When she felt stronger. Perhaps she would take them the book.

  The living room of Tammy Robsart's trailer was ten feet long, and was separated from the kitchen by a six-inch step and a wrought-iron rail flanking the kitchen table. The carpet was green and shabby, and the paneling was a bad imitation of pine, but she kept it clean and uncluttered. Better than most in the trailer park. In one corner of the room sat a straw clothes basket containing the toys of three-year-old Morgan. They had picked them up together before she sent him off to bed.

  Now that it was dark and quiet, Tammy Robsart sat at the kitchen table, her hand cupped for warmth around a mug of coffee, watching its cloud of steam rise into the chill air of the trailer's living room. In the back bedroom, scarcely larger than the double bed itself, her Morgan was already asleep, tucked under a quilt and three blankets, fully clothed. It was too cold tonight for him to sleep in his own little room, so she had taken all the bed-271

  clothes in the house and piled them on the double bed. Snuggling close to Morgan under all those covers would give them both extra warmth.

  The wind rattled the sides of the trailer, making it shudder on its underpinnings, and driving drafts of searing cold through every seam and crack in the metal casing. It couldn't be much colder outside, Tammy thought, sipping the coffee. Its warmth in her throat was momentary, but still comforting in the icy silence. She was wearing her bathrobe on top of her jeans and sweatshirt, and two pairs of Dale's socks under her bedroom slippers, but the cold encased her, reddening her cheeks and making her every move a conscious effort. Things would be better in the morning, she told herself. At daybreak she could call someone to check out the old wall furnace and see why it wasn't working. Surely they couldn't be out of oil already? She had just put in a hundred dollars' worth in January, and she couldn't afford another tankful. Maybe the church had some sort of emergency fund, though, for fuel oil. Or the county. She hated to think of taking charity, but she didn't see any way around it. Pride was one thing, but she couldn't let Morgan freeze just because there wasn't any money. Why did it have to be so cold tonight? And why didn't the furnace quit earlier, when she could have thought up someplace else to go for the night? The little kerosene space heater that she'd set in front of the door was giving off some heat, but not enough to heat a twelve-by-forty trailer 272

  in the dead of winter. It was better than nothing, though. She hoped the kerosene would last until morning.

  Tammy's fingers itched for a cigarette, but there weren't any in the house. She'd given them up because they cost too much. She bought Morgan fresh orange juice instead. Dale still smoked, but in the Gulf they got cigarettes for free. Donated by the tobacco companies as a patriotic gesture. She tried not to begrudge him his warmth and his cigarettes; life couldn't be easy for him, either, and she couldn't blame him for not writing. At school, English had always been his worst subject, and he hated to put pen to paper, misspelling most of what he did write, and communicating next to nothing. But at least a letter would show that he still thought of them. Sometimes Tammy felt like one of those Middle Eastern hostages, all shut up in this jail of a trailer with no one but Morgan to talk to, and no money for anything except bills and groceries. When she was tired and sad, it was easy to believe that Dale didn't give a damn about them.

  She was only twenty. She tried to imagine another forty years of such an existence, but her mind was too numb even for daydreams. She ought to go to bed and cuddle up with Morgan for warmth, but she wasn't sleepy yet, and to lie awake in the cold darkness would only make the day seem that much farther away. She might think too much about missing Dale and about how much Morgan had to do without, and then she would cry, which might wake him up 273

  and frighten him. Morgan hated to see her cry. He always thought it was his fault, or else he'd cry, too, thinking surely things are hopeless if Mommy is crying.

  No point in wasting time staring up at the ceiling, Tammy thought. She could write to Dale, but she would find it hard to talk about anything other than the cold and the misery she felt, so perhaps she ought to wait and write him when she could be more cheerful. She supposed that she could try to study the GED textbook. She had been going to a night tutoring class at the county extension building a couple of times a week. The high school equivalency exam would be given again in March. If she could pass that, things might begin to get better. She flipped her fingers through the pages of essays and multiple-choice questions, wondering what she felt up to studying.

  Reading comprehension, then. That was easy enough. Read a paragraph, and then answer a bunch of questions about what you had read. She found one talking about the solar system, and began to work her way through the maze of words, her lips moving soundlessly as she read. She was just puzzling over the first question, wondering what heliocentric meant, when the blaze of light made her look up, and suddenly the cold was a rope around her heart and ice in the pit of her stomach.

  The kerosene heater was a black hulk encircled by flames. Sprigs of fire had climbed the curtains and slid up the simulated-wood wall beside the door, and now around it, blocking 274

  the exit. As dark smoke began to roll toward her, she felt the sting in her eyes, breaking the spell of shock. Morgan. An instant later, Tammy Robsart was running down the hall toward the back bedroom, screaming out the name of her son.

  She ran past the trailer's other outside door, in the hall across from the tiny bathroom. There was a bookcase in front of it now, holding all of Dale's record albums, and her own collection of old textbooks and tattered paperbacks. There was no time to worry about it now. On the wall above the double bed was a narrow window, farthest from the fire. She would try to get them out that way. At least they were still dressed.

  "Morgan, honey! Wake up!" She shook him, and he tried to burrow deeper under the pile of blankets. "No, hon. We have to get out of here."

  The smoke was coming down the hall now. She kicked the bedroom door shut, and crawled over her son to crank open the metal window. It didn't lift up the way windows in a house did. Trailer windows opened outward at a downward slant. There wasn't much room to fit a person through the opening, but Morgan was tiny. He would go first.

  She shook him again. She could feel the heat from the front part of the trailer. "Morgan! Get up now."

  He opened his eyes and looked at her. "What?" His voice was a tired wail.

  "Listen to me," said Tammy, forcing herself to speak calmly, not to cry. "I'm going to put you out that win
dow, okay? And I want you to 275

  run to Troy's house and beat on his door as hard as you can. Can you do that?" He was only three, but he was a smart little boy. He could memorize a commercial if he heard it twice. "I'm going to let you down out the window, and I want you to run away as fast as you can, Morgan."

  He looked at her with big, sleep-smudged eyes. "Why?"

  "Just do it. I'll come, too, but I don't want you to wait. You just run, okay?"

  He nodded, no longer drowsy. The cold air from the open window made him shiver. "Run," he echoed.

  "Run," said Tammy. "Fast as you can." She lifted him up to the window, and eased him through the slanted opening feet first, holding him first by the waist, then the shoulders, and finally lowering him by his wrists, so that his fall to the ground was only a few feet. "Run!" she screamed. She lay panting against the win-dowsill until she saw him get up, and stagger a bit away from the trailer. He looked back once, and called out something, but she screamed again, and he sprinted off toward the Etheridges' trailer, where his playmate Troy slept safely.

  It had all taken less than two minutes, but to Tammy it seemed as if she had been living with the danger for hours, and she was weary of the terror. She pushed herself up, standing on the bed, and stuck her leg out the narrow opening. It wedged at the thigh. She pulled it out again, scarcely feeling the scrape of metal against her 276